To build a democratic future, Gambia teaches its autocratic past
At first, the students sat in shocked silence, struggling to process what they’d just heard. Then, one by one, they began to fire questions at their teacher.
Did the former president’s soldiers really kill people, even children? Why did some people support him? And how did this all happen for so long?
“Is it true that this is what the security did to people? Is it true that they beat people? Is it true?” Sheriffo Ceesay, a teacher at Bakoteh Proper Lower Primary School, recalls his sixth graders asking him. “You [could] tell from the children’s faces that this is something that is unimaginable.”
It’s been just over a year since Gambia’s Truth, Reconciliation, and Reparations Commission (TRRC) delivered its landmark
