Young activists condemn assembly’s support for state of emergency declared by ex-president Yahya Jammeh last month, which threw the country into crisis

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Fifteen hundred young people converged outside the Gambia’s parliament on Tuesday in the first demonstration since the country became a democracy, following the inauguration of president Adama Barrow.



The protesters called for all members of the national assembly to resign for supporting the decision by the disgraced ex-president, Yahya Jammeh, to declare a state of emergency two days before his mandate expired. The move increased the exodus of Gambians fleeing potential conflict, forced tourists to abandon holidays, and brought the country to the brink of civil war.

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Demonstrators from youth groups in the capital, Banjul, and surrounding provinces sang the national anthem and held banners reading: “You failed to represent the interests of the Gambian people”. Marching up and down outside the fence surrounding the assembly, they branded members – who are almost all from Jammeh’s political party – unconstitutional and selfish.

“They’ve really failed us,” said Mariama Sima, from the Gambian Youth Council.

“Their action was just to please the president,” said young people’s leader Baboucarr Kebbeh. “We want an assembly that will serve the Gambian youth and people in general. The new Gambia has no room for people like them.”

There was no immediate response from the national assembly members.

Protests during Jammeh’s 22-year reign were rare and tended to end in bloodshed. In April last year, protests against electoral reforms led to mass arrests of youths, beatings and the detention and death of an opposition leader, Solo Sandeng.

Only a couple of police officers attended this week’s peaceful demonstration. “This is a great feeling for Gambians to be able to come out for the first time in 51 years [since independence from Britain in 1965] to show their anger on issues of national interest without intimidation or police interference,” said Sulayman Ceesay, a journalist and youth activist.

“We are calling for all of the national assembly members to resign because we have lost confidence in them. We believe they will not represent our interests any more – they may sacrifice us again,” he added.

Young people, who make up 60% of the 1.9 million population, voted in unprecedented numbers in the 1 December election, overwhelmingly supporting the coalition of opposition parties.

“This time we saw the importance of voting. Collectively we agreed we want to be free [of dictatorship] and that having a change of government is the only way to achieve this,” said Ceesay, who last year toured the country to persuade typically apathetic young people to register to vote.

When Jammeh rejected the election results a week after accepting defeat, there were grave fears young people would take to the streets in protest and risk retaliation from the army, which had been ordered to fire on dissenters.

Instead, many young people channelled their energies into peaceful activism.

They organised themselves through institutions such as the National Youth Parliament, the Gambian Students’ Union and civil society organisations, writing open letters condemning Jammeh’s actions and boycotting lectures.

The hashtag #GambiaHasDecided was created, and quickly became the umbrella campaign of the political crisis.

The hashtag movement began in a living room, when a group of young professionals working in Banjul discussed how to safely vent their anger at the situation.

“We all knew that Jammeh had been voted out fairly. We didn’t want him to reverse our vote and drown our voices,” said lawyer Salieu Taal. “So we made a profile picture for Facebook and Twitter. Pretty quickly people started changing their profiles. It went viral.”

Financially supported through a crowdfunding campaign, the hashtag was printed on to billboard posters that appeared around the city. When these were ripped down by security forces, the team focused on printing thousands of free T-shirts that were distributed by volunteers throughout the country.

“The aim was to get as many Gambians as possible to wear the T-shirts at Barrow’s inauguration,” said Asta Jobe. “But then the movement became so big that we became targets.”

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Jobe and her husband, Gilleh Thomas, went into hiding together with their and one-year-old son when the National Intelligence Agency began arresting people wearing and distributing the T-shirts. “We are not activists and we weren’t interested in being heroes,” Jobe said. “But the scare tactics couldn’t keep us silent, so we started giving out spray cans.”

Over the last days of the regime, graffitied hashtags appeared in defiant variations all over the city. In the warren of sand streets in Bakau, a traditionally activist stronghold west of Banjul, every street wall was graffitied with #GambiaHasDecided.

On 21 January, Jammeh agreed to go into exile in Equatorial Guinea after 11th-hour negotiations by west African leaders.

“Jammeh’s decision to leave the country was a very big relief for all Gambians, especially for young people. It was a victory for democracy and a victory for youth empowerment and freedom of speech that we were able to achieve this peacefully,” said Ceesay.

#GambiaHasDecided plans to continue as a mass movement working with youth groups and institutions on developing awareness of constitutional rights.

“This crisis has been a blessing,” said Jobe. “A lot of us were very ignorant. We did not know what the constitution contained – we didn’t know the amount of power [Jammeh] gave himself through the constitution, so we started learning about these things.

“This change has helped a lot. Now young people believe this country is mine. Before, the president used to say, ‘I own this country.’ Now, everybody has this sense of, ‘The country belongs to me’.”