text: Ayja Balu - “We suffered a lot in their hands.” Ms. Balu was beaten several times and unlawfully detained for 10 days by military officers under former Gambian President Yahya Jammeh. When she went to the court to inquire about the whereabouts of her husband who was arrested (and detained for nearly 8 months) during a peaceful protest in 2016, she was taken into custody. While being detained Ms. Balu was beaten with a steel pipe to the point of “blood coming out of my body.” She frequently suffered beatings on her head and face and continues to suffer with vision problems in her left eye from those beatings. At the same time that she was detained, her daughter was as well.