Women detail how Police invade their village in 2012

By Adama Makasuba

Two women of Sabach Njieyen village, who testified before the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC), have detailed how personnel of the Police Intervention Unit stormed their village in 2012 arresting and beating up the men.

“After the paramilitary took out Ousman they came to the village beating people. Going to the mosque dragging people out and beating them,” Fatou Secka one of the witnesses told the commission.

“And the women were so scared that many of them got miscarriage, and some have developed illnesses from that day and some are still suffering from the incident until this day.

“They were forcefully taken out from the mosque, some were taken from where they were hidden under their beds and some hid at their home fences and they were been beating up,” she added.

Meanwhile, the pair also made a shocking revelation of a woman who got miscarriage while detained in the police station.

They said no one was spared in the village that day, adding seven women with their infant babies and six pregnant women were all arrested and detained at the Farafenni police station.

One of the witness women, Maget Touray told the commission: “Fatou forget somebody called Ndey Saffie who is an in-law to Amie. The day we went to the police station her stomach started to pain her and she got miscarriage, and we sent for a wrapper because she was heavily bleeding.”

Meanwhile, Fatou Secka also a witness said another woman called Mam Haddy gave a still birth the day she was released from detention. The pair said they faced all sort of badmouthing and intimation from the security personnel who arrested them.