UK court jails Gambian brothers for dealing drugs

A court in Portsmouth, United Kingdom has jailed two Gambian brothers after they were found guilty of dealing in cocaine and other drugs.

According to Portsmouth’s ‘The News’, the two brothers, who entered England in 2007, tried to deny they were related after their drug dealing den was uncovered.

“When police raided a one-bedroom flat in Goodwood Road, Southsea, in October last year they found £2,000 of cocaine hidden in jars in the kitchen and £1,700 worth of cannabis stuffed inside a bongo drum,” the paper reported.

According to the paper, Lamin Darbo tried to claim he had been forced to sell cocaine while his younger brother Bubacarr denied they were related and said he had no involvement in the drugs.

Bubacarr even spelt his surname with an 'e' on the end in an effort to show they were not related. But a judge at Portsmouth Crown Court rejected their story and said they had rented out a flat to set up their cocaine and cannabis operation.
The brothers have now been jailed for eight-and-a-half years.

Judge Graham White said: 'I have no doubt at all that this was a property that both of you had set up together to be a drugs house from which you could go out to the streets to deal to increase the evils of the drugs trade, to increase the misery which is put on members of society by the use of unlawful drugs.'

Lamin Darbo, 34, pleaded guilty to possession of class A and B drugs with intent to supply. He was jailed for three-and-a-half years.

Bubacarr, 30, was found guilty after a trial of possession of class A and B drugs with intent to supply and possession of criminal property, which was £370 in drug profits. He was jailed for five years.

Judge White said: 'You have no addiction yourself. This was a commercial enterprise.
'The public and people like you have to know that prison sentences will follow convictions of this sort.'

PC Mark Stephenson, who led the investigation, said: '
'They both tried to lie their way out of it. This sends a message to anyone who thinks they can deal class A drugs in Portsmouth that they will receive a substantial prison sentence.'

How Gambia’s Queen is batik-ing the US

Amie Krubally, popularly known as Queen Amie is one of The Gambia’s export to the United States of America. And for her, there seems to be only one goal, only one motivation: to dazzle America with her unique batik designs.

Born in Bakau, Ms. Krubally because of family ties, which stretch to Senegal and Mali, had the opportunity to travel frequently as a child. The rich cultures of Mali, Senegal, and her own country, The Gambia, had a profound influence on her during her formative years. Over the years, she developed a view of art and history that was finally brought to life when she was introduced to Batik in 1963. The state of the art, which at the time was known as "Stamp Batik," was a process where pieces of wood were carved to make patterns, which were dipped in wax and placed on fabric to make designs. The first major departure from this method in Bakau was pioneered by Amie Krubally and resulted in the expressive and painterly forms that distinguish her art from its precedents.

Amie has gained worldwide recognition for her innovation and artistry. The Gambian government granted her the title, "Queen of Batik", in recognition of her wide-reaching influence in the art of Batik. Over the past forty years, she has worked, taught, and exhibited in locations as diverse as Los Angeles, London, and Berlin. Ms. Krubally is renown not only for having led the revolution in forms and techniques of Batik but also for having used her art to tell the rich histories of her Cassamance and Gambian heritage, springing from Bintong Krubally, a Malian king and her great grandfather. Her works tell the stories of her ancestry: Sundiata Keita, slavery, motherlessness, pain, victory, life - themes that bring admiration for a woman who can boast of a Bakau Primary education and some training in the United States but who has gone on to sit with city mayors, presidents, and renown artists and dignitaries throughout the world.

Now living in Tenderloin, neighborhood of San Francisco, United States, Amie holds exhibitions and trainings which have made her gain wide popularity among the neighbourhood. Amie’s batiks have been described as a “remarkable, ambitious, and complicated melding of culture, class, and creativity.”

Queen Amie participated in a neighbourhood exhibition in September, 2009, where her designs were singled out as unique. The themes in the artwork include, among other things, human trafficking, theater, homelessness, immigrant communities, local history and architecture, and giving a voice to children shuttered by the environment.

Amie’s designs are based on her own personal stories and the folk myths from her native land. For the past several years, she has been living in the Tenderloin, unable to ply her craft due to her current living situation. However, it took the support of artists Doug Hall and John Roloff who used the Wonderland Project as a vehicle to provide Queen a much-needed studio to produce her work, and enable her to share her batik legacy and expertise through an exhibition and workshops, giving her a voice and means to share her enormous talent with a larger audience and the community.

Hall and Roloff managed to find Queen a studio space, along with equipment and materials, where Queen has been working, displaying her wares, and teaching her craft for the duration of the Wonderland exhibition. Thanks to the generosity of the clothing designer, Lily Samii,Queen Amie enjoyed the use of a dream studio; Samii donated the large ground floor of her building at 125 Hyde Street where Samii's production studios are located. Here, over the past month, Queen was able to display her artwork, create new work, and offer several batik workshops for friends and residents of the Tenderloin.

Hall and Roloff explain, "During our research [for Wonderland], we came up with numerous ideas, many of which involved procedures for interacting with and celebrating members of the community and their stories. While a couple of these excited us, they seemed, at the same time, overly abstract and perhaps self-serving in the sense that they imposed our vision onto the community rather than allowing elements within the community to come forward and to do so on their own terms and with their voices intact, which has been our intention all along." Their work with Queen, in which they acted less as "artists" and more as promoters and facilitators, turned out to be a perfect match - not merely a temporary artistic intervention in the neighborhood, but instead a collaboration with Queen and the Tenderloin community that hopefully will produce lasting effects.

This work highlighted the talent and also hardship of the local artist living in the Tenderloin. Queen conducted four workshops for adults and children living in the Tenderloin (including the Tenderloin Boys and Girls Club) imparting her knowledge and skill in this almost forgotten art form.

"Queen ran a batik factory in The Gambia, employed hundreds of people, and got an award for her exemplary leadership there," said Roloff. "When Doug and I met her, we were charmed by her spirit and immediately empathized, artist to artist - here you have this enormous potential and talent, but it's not being fulfilled." Hall and Roloff hope that after Wonderland concludes, a permanent studio can be found for Queen to continue to work and utilize her talent and craft, preserving the techniques she's developed, and allowing her to pass them on through her artistic practice. Roloff noted, "She's a living master - and such an asset to the city, to the community. Perhaps this can create a model for other people like her."

The Case for Migrants

Nations of the world have been asked to open their borders to migrants, and see their nations experience more development.

This call is the central theme of the 2009 Human Development Report, published by the United Nations Development Programme released recently.

The report themed: “Overcoming Barriers: Human Mobility and Development” argued that removing barriers to migration would greatly help migrants to improve their life chances, ensuring that they have access to the different indices with which development is measured and do not remain in abject poverty.

According to the report, migration is a fact of life in recent years, whereby people move from one geographical location to others, many times over long distances and between different regions.

As thus, the flow of migration could be from the South to the North, whereby people from Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia move towards the United States, Europe and Australasia in search for greener pastures. Migration may even be within the borders of a country.

However, migrants have been faced with different challenges, especially such policies that limit the opportunities they can assess in their destination countries. This, the report said, must change.

Relating the reasons for migration, the report says: “For many people around the world, moving away from their home town or village can be the best – sometimes the only – option open to improve their life chances.”

While there is as yet no typical profile of migrants around the world, it is a fact that all manners of people, ranging from the skilled to the unskilled, at one time or the other seek a break from their situations and explore what is possible for them outside their own countries.

Economic conditions, conflicts, whether civil or political, as well as insecurity have made people to seek solace in other lands apart from their own. Yet many are still trafficked.

Unfortunately, the fact that there are policies that restrict the entrance of people into other countries and such strict measures being observed before people could get access to other countries have made the issue of illegal migration more conspicuous in recent times. Many people, especially youths from developing countries including The Gambia, have been lost to this tidal sway of illegal migration.

However, rather than meet the all rosy life that had propelled them to leave their home in the first place, migrants are sometimes met with hostility in the form of an environment, both policy and physical which militate against their survival.

While there have been myths held by locals that migrants are the causes of many of their social problems, the 2009 HDR argues that rather than this, “migrants boost economic output, at little or no cost to locals.” It said that as they acquire the local language and necessary skills needed to survive in their host countries, migrants tend to move up the economic ladder, they tend to integrate quite more naturally.

According to it, human development could be really helped if countries remove all barriers to movement.

“Large gains to human development can be achieved by lowering the barriers to movement and improving the treatment of movers. A bold vision is needed to realize these gains.”

The report argues that admissions and treatment of movers constitute the two most important dimensions of the mobility agenda, which would not only be the concerns of government but also of non state actors like the private sector, unions, non governmental organizations and individual migrants themselves.

“While policy makers face common face common challenges, they will of course need to design and implement different migration policies in their respective countries, according to national and local circumstances,” it said, noting that despite this, certain good practices still stand out and could still be more widely adopted.

The necessity of a ‘joint force’ to protect migrants is primary as the world has witnessed xenophobic attacks against migrants in recent times. Attacks on foreigners in South Africa in recent times are pointer to the necessity of instituting special frameworks that would protect foreigners.

This evidently would require a measure of commitment from the host governments. Apart from institutionalizing peace within the country itself, it would also go a long way in establishing diplomatic ties between countries.

Instead of the above, however, some host countries have encouraged an atmosphere of inequality between locals and foreigners by maintaining de facto barriers to movement.

The report noted specifically that restrictions take the form of reduced basic service provisions and entitlements against migrants.

It then says: “While not a substitute for broader development efforts, migration can be a vital strategy for households and families seeking to diversify and improve their livelihoods, especially in developing countries.

“Governments need to recognize this potential to integrate migration with other aspects of national development policy.… Advancing this agenda will require strong, enlightened leadership coupled with a more determined effort to engage with the public and raise their awareness about the facts around migration."

While the report dissociates itself from a wholesome campaign for liberalization of international mobility, it notes that “people relate to each other in myriad ways and that their moral obligations can operate at different levels.

“This is primarily because individuals don’t belong to just one society or group. Rather than being uniquely or solely defined by their religion, race, ethnicity or gender, individuals commonly see themselves through the multiple prisms of a set of identities.”

To act in the manner above would afford migrants increased opportunities to try their capacities in diverse areas, thus contributing their quota to both their personal development and that of their host countries.

The report concludes by suggesting policy and institutional reforms.

“Our suggested reforms to government policies and institutions could bring about sizeable human development gains from mobility at home and abroad.

Advancing this agenda will require committed leadership, extensive consultation with stakeholders and bold campaigning for changes in public opinion to move the debates and policy discussions forward.”