Yusupha Lowe, a 16 year old teenager who by this time is suppose be in a class room learning to become a productive citizen of The Gambia is however, languishing in Yahya Jammeh’s detention. Yusupha is detained for an alleged crime of his father Bai Lowe, who is alleged to have been involved in the attempted coup of 30 December 2014 in The Gambia. Yusupha Lowe was arrested together with his 19-year-old uncle, Pa Alieu Lowe and his father’s ex-wife, Jariatou Lowe, on 1 January 2015. Meanwhile, Jariatou Lowe has been released since without charge, however Yusupha and Pa Alieu are still in detention.
Yahya Jammeh is using the detention of Yusupha Lowe as a deterring for future attempt to uproot his dictatorship led government. What he Jammeh fails to comprehend is that, if such tactics have any effect, by now the likes of Muarmarr Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Charles Taylor et al,. would have still been in power. Those people were at one time much more powerful than he could ever be, but where are they and there children, Saddam and his entire family has been exterminated, Gaddafi is killed together with some of his children and some are jailed and Charles Taylor and his son are being detained in the UK and US respectively. These are just few examples of former dictators who used all forms of fear tactics to scare people from challenging their brutal dictatorship but they ended up been either brutally killed, jailed or exiled in other countries as in the case of the aforementioned former dictators.
The religious leaders such as Imam Abdoulie Fatty, Imam Cherno Mass Kah, lamin Touray, Ebrima Jarju and the rest should be in the forefront of campaigning for the release of Yusupha Lowe, but due to the fact that those people put power and money before God, they are incapable to campaign for anything good in the Gambia. The statement last week by Imam Abdoulie Fatty, that Gambia is free and people are not hungry is a clear manifestation that these so called Imams have lost all moral authority for them to be considered Imam or even listen to as they have no sympathy or empathy for ordinary Gambians.
Meanwhile, this is not the first time Dictator Jammeh has either killed, jailed or maimed Gambian teenagers, it can be recalled that in the tranquil moments of Monday morning on 10 April 2000, Yahya ordered the killings of 14 innocent students including a journalist and Red Cross volunteer who were only protesting against security forces’ brutality against their fellow students. Jammeh then quickly passed a bill in the national assembly to indemnified all those who participated in the killings of those students and up to date no justice for them. However, Dictator Jammeh you need to know that no matter how long it takes there will be justice for the innocent Gambian youths you killed, maimed, jailed and exiled and that day your so called Imams will all run away from you. Yahya in case you forget, you have to remember that you are a family man, so please free Yusupha Lowe. We hope as it has been said “a word to the wise is sufficient”, you will comprehend what lies ahead of you and your accomplices.
Gambia Voices 