Gambia’s ‘Witches’ Testify On Torture
SINTET, Gambia — Matty Sanyang was at a baby naming ceremony when the soldiers arrived in Sintet, a farming town not far from the West African coast. They pulled her neighbors from their homes and announced that the president had made a decision: The people of her village were witches, and they would need to be cured.
Then, she said, the soldiers pushed her into a truck, stripped her naked and forced her to say she was a witch.
“What they took,” said Ms. Sanyang, “was our dignity.”
On November 11, a public national truth and reconciliation commission in Gambia began hearing for the first time televised testimony from citizens like Ms. Sanyang who say they were victims of what commission officials are calling “witch hunts” ordered by Yahya Jammeh, the former president who ruled for 22 years before fleeing in 2017.
The commission is designed to investigate atrocities perpetrated during his long reign. As president, Mr. Jammeh jailed dissidents, ordered extrajudicial killings and forced AIDS patients to quit their medications, according to human rights advocates. He also branded some of his citizens as witches, a tactic his critics say was central to his effort to divide his country and consolidate power.
Since the hearings began, a member of the Gambian police force has accused the former Inspector General of Police, Ensa Badjie, of helping to lead the witch hunts. Another witness from a small Gambian village has testified that at least two of her neighbors died as a result of the attacks.
Hundreds of people were abducted in Gambia, according to Amnesty International.
In Sintet, soldiers poured a burning liquid into the throats and eyes of many residents, according to witnesses, leaving some plagued by vomiting and diarrhea; others said they have experienced long-term kidney and vision problems.
Ms. Sanyang, a mother of four, recalled the chaos on the day of the roundup, in March 2009.
Trucks and buses poured in, she said. Then came a crowd of men. The men said they were healers and went house to house, guarded by military and police officers, pulling people from their beds and sending them to the trucks.
Momodou Bah, a former elected leader in Mr. Jammeh’s party, said he watched them take his aunt and his grandmother. “They said they were doing this job for the president,” he said.
The officers drove dozens of people to Kanilai, the president’s hometown, to a compound on the president’s farm. Inside the compound, officials forced Ms. Sanyang and dozens of others to drink the strange liquid, and splashed it in their faces, she said.
Mr. Bah said he had followed the caravan to the compound to try to negotiate the release of Sintet’s citizens. He said he saw his neighbors screaming and writhing on the floor until they lost consciousness.
When the kidnapping victims returned to Sintet, many found the trauma wasn’t over. People fell ill, and their farms and businesses suffered. Children went hungry.
The truth commission hearings began in January and are expected to last two years. After, the attorney general will decide whom to prosecute. No one knows if the authorities will be able to bring Mr. Jammeh to court.
Ms. Sanyang said that even if she goes on television to tell her story and proclaim she is not a witch, she wasn’t sure if people would believe her.
But she wants to testify anyway, she said. “I want to be able to say: ‘This happened to me.’ ”