Protesters in Banjul, Gambia. Source: Global VoicesThe following is an email message sent to the staff of APC and the members of the APC network on 3 December by Poncelet Ileleji, an APC individual member in Gambia.
I came online after approximately 52 hours of internet shutdown at 12:30 p.m. yesterday. I was so exhausted from working late in the night coordinating with my staff on the ground at the civil society (CS) monitoring centre in Gambia partly funded by the UN to monitor our presidential elections – as you all know, we have a new dawn on the smiling coast of Gambia now. I can only email now since we came back online at 12:30 p.m. yesterday and the whole euphoria of the new dawn and exhaustion played on till early this morning.
My last contact online on 30 November prior to the internet being shut down was with our own Deborah Brown of APC, who was checking to see whether the internet was really going to be shut down in Gambia. We knew it might happen, but did not believe the tyrant would do it, especially as he had blocked all social media sites since August, for which we had to use proxies to gain access. However, before I could reply to Deborah very well on WhatsApp, the internet was off by 8:08 p.m. on 30 November, a day before our elections.
It’s interesting to note that I had voiced concerns to certain entities and to some of you that this might happen. However, maybe as it was little Gambia, it was not really on the radar of digital activists globally. That’s my own opinion, though. Our tyrant, kudos to him, pulled it off with impunity and disregard of our given liberties.
30 November
I had just returned home at 7:48 p.m. from dropping my staff at the Paradise Hotel, where we had the CS monitoring centre. We had a lot of strategies in place and I had set up a small network at home to work with my staff at the CS monitoring centre and volunteers on the ground, collating results of the elections in various localities in Gambia. My role was to disseminate to Gambians in the diaspora as I got feedback from my team in the monitoring centre.
However, Jammeh, our president, had other ideas: he not only shut down the internet but all international lines by 8:08 p.m. He even had it announced on TV, and it was all part of National Security, as our land borders with Senegal closed and our virtual borders closed, all in the name of security. They were to be closed till Saturday, 3 December. Fortunately for us, he LOST and conceded by midday of the 2nd. However, he shot himself in the foot already prior to the elections. The biggest mistake he made was allowing on-the-spot counting and results posted in each polling station as they were counted, he said he wanted it very transparent. He tried reversing it to the previous format of all the marbles, as we use, taken after polling to a counting point, but all parties rejected this, and the Electoral Commission said it was a done deal.
A lot of you folks might have heard and read about the unique marbles used for voting here. Well the history of that came from the British who used it in the early colonial elections, as you had loads of illiterates then in Gambia (it was easier for illiterates to understand what to do as the British claimed then in terms of voting when Gambia or Bathurst as it was known then was a British colony). So votes were cast by you dropping your marble in a barrel coloured with the colour of your party or a photo of the candidate, all in privacy, as is the norm with voting. Since then subsequent governments have used it. Mind you, we have had only two presidents: Sir Dawda Jawara, 30 years rule, overthrown by Jammeh, who has ruled for 22 years. He failed in his billion-year rule he had promised Gambia on 2 December.
1 and 2 December
Back to the shutdown. Knowing that we had on-the-spot counting and results posted on each polling station immediately after voting, at 5 p.m on 1 December we started texting locally to get results from each polling station via our CS ground monitors. At 10 p.m. of 1 December, the day of the election, SMS was shut down, so we could only call by voice locally. However, due to some of our friends who came in as observers from the USA, we had access to satellite phones so we were able to communicate to the outside world minimally and secretively in our own unique way, using voice to get results systematically. The final results were known by us, the CS monitoring team, by 12 midnight of 2 December. Since it was not announced officially by the Electoral Commission we had to keep quiet, as tension existed and threats against any protest had been made by Jammeh. We knew the joint coalition of seven parties, through their candidate Adama Barrow, had won the elections, but silence was the order of the day. Jammeh the tyrant knew it too. He tried to bully the Electoral Commission chairman, but luckily a section of the army would not have it. He had played divide and rule politics branded with fear, killings, torture, disappearance throughout his tenure and that cost him, because the part of the army who he directed to guard the Electoral Commission refused to follow his orders to stop the chairman of the Electoral Commission from releasing the actual result.
It was this stalemate that made him concede only at 12:30 p.m. on 2 December, after he knew every Gambian knew, his party knew too, that he had lost, that it was a people’s victory. He claims he plans to retire to his farm, but he really cannot move because the reality is that the atrocities will not go without the coalition government investigating him. A lot has happened in my little neck of the woods under his watch. Jammeh still has leading opposition members in jail since April of this year; as I write they are still in jail, so only when the coalition leader assumes power in January 2017 will they be released, unless Jammeh with his forced acceptance of defeat changes heart and releases them prior to the new president being sworn in. Please note the concession was not fully his wish, he had no choice, as the army were not fully in support of stealing people’s votes. He could not use violence, as the army stood their ground. That’s where we were lucky: our army stayed professional and accepted the wishes of the people.
The reasons for Jammeh’s loss are many. He still had some support, but his decision to islamise Gambia was greatly not accepted by all, including Muslims who make up the majority. The feeling he planned to totally abandon the constitution if he had won was obvious to perpetuate his billion-year rule, as he said. The insults to the Mandinka tribe, that he vowed to return back to their ancestral home of Mali, was another factor; the Mandinkas are the majority tribe in Gambia. All of this, along with numerous atrocities through his intelligence services, and isolationism from the International community due to numerous human rights abuses, youths dying in the Mediterranean in large numbers – all these factors contributed to his downfall. The youths basically kicked him out, those who knew only him as president, as some were born in the year he took over in 1994, they where the game changers. OUR DIGITAL NATIVES MADE THE DIFFERENCE, as over 50% of Gambian population is between the ages of 0 to 30.
In conclusion, on the shutdown
Personally, as far as I know, Gambia has been the only nation to shut down the entire internet for over 48 hours – I might be wrong but stand to be corrected – with no access to the world. Easy to do with the outgoing tyrant we had, who had gun-toting soldiers manning the gateway, with only one fibre link out of the country, and limited satellite backup from GAMTEL, the main telco, which gateway he controlled, he basically controls everything here. As Gambians reflect on taking back their freedom as we move into 2017, we know he, the tyrant, did not do it alone; he was aided and abetted by fellow Gambians too. But the tyrant did all this in the name of security, the big slogan to easily use to perpetuate such acts nowadays for those leaders insecure at home and abroad.
APC has continuously advocated the need for a free and open internet. The African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms is a big starting point for us on the African continent. Our leaders ought to know the implication of shutdowns; it is basically an atrocity to me, economically millions were lost in a country like ours, already suffering greatly economically. I was filled with tears to see young Gambians sharing their experiences on the 52-hour shutdown, it was like being confined in solitary confinement. As we struggle to look for ways to get our digital security strengthening programme in 2017 and onwards in “my neck of the woods”, I hope APC puts priority on the big need for capacity building in developing countries, especially as we have elections coming in similar dictatorial states like Chad, Angola, etc. next year. People might learn from our experience here: we had no help, but Gambian youths persevered through patience and made their voices count in the period of shutdown, where all heads could have been lost to creating violence. For that perseverance I commend our youths here, hence the change we are going to have come 2017.
I hope you all in your own little way share our story and look for ways to support others that might face similar situations, as I personally think we will have varying degrees of shutdowns in years to come in various parts of the world, as a security slogan is easy to play with by insecure leaders these days. We count on continuously trying to improve our capacities in the aspects of circumventing shutdowns through digital security programmes and learning from others in the APC network who have the expertise. At our centre, after the storm calms down, we are planning to do a “post mortem” on the economic cost of the shutdown to Gambia.
I thank you all for your support and wishes as we strive for a better Gambia, a better world, where the internet has become a global player in connecting us all. Wishing those attending the IGF physically safe travels, and apologies if I wrote too long, I just had to share this with you all. Have a great weekend.