Cherno M. Njie
Eulogy for December
30th Heroes
by
Cherno M.
Njie
If I must die in the forest, let it be a lion which
kills me
The
circumstances under which I met these men – and I am speaking of the late
Captain Njaga Jagne, Colonel Lamin
Sanneh, and Alagie Jaja Nyass, all men of the military either in The Gambia or
abroad– were difficult. Those circumstances—well, a political and social
situation in the Gambia, in our country, that was intolerable to us. Maybe it
is regrettable that we all could not have come together simply as friends and
fellow Gambians, unrelated to any sense of urgency that we all felt about four
and a half years ago at our first meetings. Regrettable—maybe, yes—that the
horrors committed against the body of the Gambian people for something like
twenty-two years were what brought me to meet Captain Jagne, Colonel Sanneh,
and Alagie Nyass. But still, the fact is that I came to meet these men as
Gambians, with an intense and common concern for the evils Gambians were
everyday experiencing as we watched apprehensively from the outside. I think
the more important question is whether or not we regret our actions, which is a
really a question of whether or not these men, who paid the ultimate price,
died in vain. Of whether or not our actions, at the head of which was the
failed coup attempt of December 30th of 2014, was a senseless action
and just another hopeful expectation, or an act of great meaning and heroism.
The
situation in The Gambia weighed heavily upon them—the pressure did not let up
with time, because there was always news of some other atrocity from friends
and family, if not in the newspapers: disappearances, torturing, jailings,
intimidation, paranoia… All of us are familiar with the immense difficulty of
managing such a weight when there is no obvious way to relieve it. It weighs,
weighs and weighs more seemingly every day—and it may even be that the weight
is not more, only that under it, day to day, one weakens ever so slowly.
In
the United States we of the Diaspora have always agitated from afar, through
advocacy groups, appeals to international human rights organizations, the
United Nations, African Union, and ECOWAS, and pressuring the US State Department
to act against Jammeh in some substantial way. The urgent need for change, and
the lack of its coming was frustrating—the apparently slow movement of advocacy
did not satisfy Njaga, Sanneh, or Nyass.
I
spoke a moment ago about weight, a weight that, quite literally, pushes one
into particular decisions, into specific ultimatums. The load on top of you has,
in a certain sense, trapped you, forcing you to move slowly and with utmost
exertion. Meanwhile, it often feels that you must keep up the veneer of peace
while you are being almost literally crushed. If the weight does not let up, the
regular rules of common sense naturally
give way to another sort of instinct, but, still, the shift is a reasonable one.
From one point of view, the so-called normal point of view –I mean that view
that has the privilege of clarity, safety, security, and plenty of time to
think– the decision of these men may seem to be the result of a unique
irrationality, that understandingly, but with error, yields to a route of
action that is misguided, though perhaps justifiable. But that is, we have to say, unfair—not to mention that these
rationalizations are entirely unsatisfactory for those who loved these men, and
always had some clue to their inner turmoil. It is horrible for one who loved Captain Jagne,
or loved Colonel Sanneh, or loved Alagie Nyass in any sort of way to think that
these men were acting irrationally up to the moment of their deaths. No—the
thought does not settle well. Such a privileged rationalization leaves one with
an ambiguous uncertainty that relates more to a sense of misunderstanding, or
of incomprehensibility than to any fault in the decision-making of our loved
ones. That incomprehensibility I think comes from the situation itself, the
circumstances that in the first place pushed these and other men into a radical
decision. The behavior of Jammeh and the state of things in The Gambia were
always more surreal to us than our decision to act against him. It was always very natural for us to recognize that
forceful removal was our only option. Those of us involved in the
decision were looking at a set of unusual circumstances that called for a
different sort of consideration. We must not blame these men if we are to call
them heroes—we may lament their deaths, but we must blame, above all, the situation
in The Gambia at the time, we must blame a regime that was repulsive to these
men, and the fact that evil had taken root in our homeland. Their deaths in the
line of fighting betray a passionate commitment to the routing of that evil, an
attempt to wrest free the government of The Gambia, its institutions, and above
all its people from a repressive state of affairs that at every point made
impossible a safe, healthy living and the basic freedoms to make that living. The
attempt was a selfless act, and we have also come here to commemorate that act,
even while we grieve their loss.
It
is not fair that I stand here speaking rather than one or all of these men. It
is not fair that the world that we know, that The Gambia, the country that we
know had, at the time, come to such a state that pushed these men to a drastic
action. It was not fair that the body of the Gambian people should endure
terror while these men at a distance felt a nagging and impenetrable sense of
guilt— that they, because of that distance, were out of the way of Jammeh’s
violence. They were, are men, who then, in 2014, saw that the world, our
country, could be another way, so they declared “no.” At the bottom of their
actions, which many may still have a difficult time understanding, was a fundamental
decision to utter “no” and to begin to practice the meaning of that “no.”
The
act of resistance led to their deaths. We know the list of deaths at the hands
of Jammeh is a very long one. We all gather here as, in some way, victims of
his terror of twenty-two years. I stand here with a heavy heart, because I have
lost three great friends. My heart is heavy because these men, like so many
Gambians, tragically paid with their lives in their attempt to stop the Jammeh
regime from reducing human beings to victims. Their humanity would not permit
them to stand idly by and watch Gambians denied their humanity. It burdens my heart that their lives were
claimed by an arbitrary and irrational evil that wished only to maintain its
hold on power. Nevertheless, we are here today to remember that these men with
great effort and purpose challenged that evil. But, exactly because they were
men of the good, it should not be forgotten that these men throughout their
lives were good men. They developed a sense of purpose and principle early in
their lives, and carried these through to the end of their lives. Sadly they
did not see Jammeh finally forced from power; as we, collectively, carry on the
project of rebuilding The Gambia so that such evil can never again claim the
lives of good men, we remember Captain Njaga Jagne, Colonel Lamin Sanneh, and Alagie Jaja
Nyass. It is they who still live with us, propelling in some way the mission of
reconstruction, recuperation, and repair in our homeland. We grieve their
loss—they will not come back to us. Still, we must remind ourselves that their
deaths did not come to pass in vain, for they contributed to the long struggle
against evil that eventually prevailed upon Jammeh. I remember each with a
heavy heart—but it is uplifted when I look up and see, everywhere, their legacy
in this country.
[1] This is an abridged version of what I read at a memorial service and news conference
held by D30 at the University of The Gambia the 13th of January
2018, as a belated eulogy for my friends and comrades Lamin Sanneh, Njaga
Jagne, and Alagie Nyass, who died at State House in Banjul, in the early hours
of December 30th, 2014.
