Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC) is an independent Gambian institution mandated to conduct research and investigations into human rights violations committed under ex-President Yahya Jammeh.
The Commission further aims is to prevent recurrence of the violations and abuses suffered under the past regime by making recommendations to government and citizens aimed at ensuring the crimes of the past never repeat in The Gambia.
In pursuit of these aims, the TRRC will facilitate community and national reconciliation, launch civic education efforts on peace and justice, design individual and communal reparations, and shape the scope of future prosecutions and amnesties. It will promote national reconciliation and healing, by assisting victims and their relatives
This is a critical task to find the truth and justice, heal the nation and then move forward as one people. Truth and reconciliation should be accompanied by justice. While we all hope for peace it shouldn’t be peace at any cost, but peace based on principle, on justice and truth.
It must fundamentally be inclusive in issues and in stakeholders. The truth must come out and we share why the hate/bitterness and come up with collective peaceful means to find a common ground for real reconciliation and reconstruction of the nation. Those in power and the old guards must also be ready to give up a lot of their privileges or else we all face the wrath of the Gambians.
TRRC, the first examples that pop into my head are Rwanda South Africa, and Cambodia; developing countries that have been plagued by conflict and need to find a way to air their grievances and start to move the country forward.
However, Justice can’t be served unless truth is revealed. The dynamics are different, but there are also many similarities between what has happened in The Gambia, Rwanda and in South Africa. Gross human rights violation, injustice and denial of human dignity.After the change came in South Africa and Mandela became president, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up by Arch-Bishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa, and even though it may have had some flaws, we believed it helped a nation “bleed” and helped overt a bloody civil war that could have destroyed South Africa and could have killed tens of thousands.
The wise statesman, Nelson Mandela, as the father of a new South Africa encouraged Tutu to do this. These incredible leaders helped save the nation from horrible destruction in the 1990’s. Victims and families of deceased victims faced their oppressors in very painful meetings, and with the promise of immunity, the oppressors told the truth of the crimes they had committed or conspired to commit.
The nation had to have a time to bleed before it could heal. South Africa still has many problems to overcome today, but we doubt if any person of color would want to go back to those segregationist apartheid days of white oppressors brutally ruling them.
A tremendous opportunity to accept the darkness of our collective history and to proceed, without delay, with reconciliation and rebuilding our relationships, reconcile our difference, heal the nation, then move forward. Let’s not let it slip away. We can have a Fair Country.
Gambia needs the TRRC in order to heal and reconcile Gambians as one people and one nation to avoid the re- occurrence in future.