By Lenrie Peters

As thousands of Gambians - both Christians and non-Christians - prepare to celebrate the Feast of Christmas, let us not forget the life of Deyda Hydara. Some are nailed to a Cross and hidden in a Tomb, while others are gunned down and precipitately shovelled into cold-earth. Yet the fire, which flayed after them is sometimes disproportionate to their simple existence.

Deyda Hydara has decreed through his life and death, and through the shattering experience of his family, that Gambians must wake up from their slumber and reassess the realities of their situation; that their consciences shall demand ‘no crimes with impunity’ until this spreading epidemic of violence and savagery is flayed from our midst. We recall how the incidents, which began as raving happenings, eventually turned into the holocausts in Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Ivory Coast, and shudder at the self same road map of creeping violence. Gambians must never allow this monstrous anarchy of evil to bestride the landscape. Deyda said to me only a few days before his death that the heinous laws being propagated against journalists now, were designed to silence the opposition when election campaigning starts. Let the killing and night arrests stop now!

Should not the AU or Nepad start asking questions? Would it not be a brotherly gesture and an aid to good
governance? Should the international community wait in the hope that there would not be another incident? Is anti-terrorism the only yardstick of friendship in the international community? They made the same mistake during the cold war with people like Mobutu, and are still burning their fingers in that cauldron. They should have learnt by now that prevention is better than woeful failures.

The cruel irony of the muddle is that now that we are sending our brave young men out to protect Liberians and the people of Darfur, Gambians cannot walk their own streets in safety. The Romans used to say that those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad. But there is always a chance for healing, of drawing back to saner way; and bring back from the brink; transformation to be devoutly pursued.

(The Point, Friday, 14 January 2005)
(Reprinted with permission)