Fiona and David Fulton
'My arm had all but healed and apart from sores and my skeletal appearance, I felt that I was not in a bad condition' (p183).
In the latter 2000s, David Fulton was a former army major who worked as a chaplain to the Gambian army, while his 47-year-old wife Fiona looked after terminally ill patients. They had apologised publicly for sending e-mails critical of authorities of The Gambia to friends in the UK, but were jailed in December 2008 after pleading guilty to charges of sedition against the government of President Yahya Jammeh. The country has long been criticised for its human rights record.
In Fulton's autobiographical book of this period, Time To Tell, he describes excruciating torture, including hours and days he would be locked up in a tiny space called The Chimney, designed to inculcate claustrophobia and break morale. His skin-and-bone state is matched in its harrowing depictions only by Fulton's bone-dry Scottish humour, and inner resilience that he ascribes to his faith in God. The Gambian authorities, including one memorable repeating figure named Shades, are less convinced:
'We plan not only to lock you up for life, but to bring embarrassment to the British government' (p141).
Time To Tell occasionally sails close to what might nowadays be called 'Islamohobia', but Christianity appears to be such a minority pursuit in The Gambia so as to make such a neologism even more laughable than the Equality Act 2010 has subsequently made it. Throughout his ordeal, Fulton makes it clear he is following a higher calling than either the UK government or the increasingly politically correct organised Church (which also appears to have abandoned the couple).
'I was here because Fiona and I truly believed that we should sell up everything and go to The Gambia to tell the Muslims that they were going to hell in a handcart' (p59).
Due to its first-person perspective, Fiona is a mostly absent presence, her plight being lived out in other establishments. David's pain over her involvement pops up in the text repeatedly, even in the honest recounting of 'a mistake', by which he is faced to contemplate concocting another expedient-if-clumsy way out of their predicament (including a potential false allegation of rape). On many occasions what amounts to a litany of false allegations, pretending sedition whilst really meaning 'illegal preaching', are noted in Fulton's journalising of his treatment at the hands of his captors.
'In the cell for twenty-four hours a day, for the lack of anything else to do, I was able to remember the times I had in The Gambia. I believed that evil existed in only a minority of Muslims, and Gambians. It wasn't the ordinary people; it was the extremist leaders of their false and hate-ridden religion. It was the President, a megalomaniac, a murderer and his belief in the power of witchcraft that was dragging The Gambia down' (p115).
In these polarised times, in which Christians around the world are experiencing minority persecution unheard of in most peoples' lifetimes, Time To Tell brings home some directly lived truths. While technological communications reach further and further into real lives, and while Ukraine and Gaza remind us of what real warfare is, Time To Tell invokes the terrifying spectre of state-sanctioned torture, the absence of which is taken for granted in the liberal democratic West.
That faith and trust in inner resilience can bring the subject through such a destructive experience is edifying in itself. That the freedom of expression of spreading your faith - or the criticising of another government - can lead to such barbarism reminds the reader of the need to always protect the secular principles of individual sovereignty.
By Sean Bw Parker
Time To Tell is available here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Time-Tell-David-Fulton/dp/0992938309
Please let us know if you think that there is a mistake in this article, explaining what you think is wrong and why. We will correct any errors as soon as possible.
Comments