Riot police were deployed in the vicinity of the Gunjur police station on Sunday evening as tensions simmered in parts of the coastal settlement over the reported violent attack on two indigenes by a mob from neighbouring Berending.
Youths of Gunjur gathered at the town square as the news of the Sunday’s violent assault reached town.
Though there were no disturbances in the coastal community, the paramilitary has been sending in reinforcements.
JollofNews gathered from multiple sources that about 20 people from Berending attacked Gunjur resident Yaya Tombong Darboe at his farm on Sunday.
“He sustained serious injury after he was hacked on the leg with a cutlass,” one source narrated.
Another Gunjur native Lamin Kaddy also reportedly sustained severe injury during the assault.
Three clans in Gunjur have been embroiled in bloody land dispute with the people of Berending for more than 30 years now.
In 2015, more than 10 Gunjurians have been either violently assaulted or harassed by elements from Berending as the village was rapidly expanding. The Gunjur clans felt the people of Berending were illegally occupying and selling their lands. Berending insisted it owned the lands.
Berending is the outcome of the goodwill and the compassion of the Darboe clan of Gunjur. When the elders of the neighbouring Kartong village told the founder of Berending village; the late Buruwa Sanyang from Casamance to pack his stuff, gather his cattle and leave their village forthwith, he headed for Gunjur with his family. The elders of the Darboe Kunda clan welcomed him and his family in Gunjur with open arms and allowed him to stay. The clan later gave him land to farm and to rear his cattle. Other relatives of his from Casamance later joined him there and Berending started to expand.
However, long after his passing, Buruwa’s offspring and other newcomers from Casamance began to lay claim on the ancestral lands of the Darboe Kunda clan and other clans such as Jatta Kunda and Sawo Kunda. His great grandchild Buba Drammeh is currently undergoing trial at the Banjul High Court for allegedly killing a Gunjur native in a land dispute. One of his great grandchildren Jata Sanyang was also undergoing trial at the Brikama Magistrates’ Court for violently assaulting a police officer, who was deployed, to deal with a land problem in Gunjur.
The Gambia government has since set up a boundary demarcation commission to arbitrate the Gunjur/Berending intractable land dispute, but nothing remarkable has so far happened.
No arrest has so far been made in the Sunday attack at the time of writing this story.
