Published On: Mon, Dec 3rd, 2012

Report: Impunity Endangers Somalia’s Journalists

Somalia’s journalists are urging their new government and the international community to help end the impunity they say is contributing to making Somalia one of the world’s most dangerous countries to practice journalism.

So far 18 Somali journalists have been killed this year and 44 since 2007.

The National Union of Somali Journalists on Friday said that impunity has become a fundamental problem in Somalia. Journalists in almost every region of the country commonly face harassment, blackmail, arbitrary police detention and, in addition, criminals are hired to suppress them, said the group in a report to mark the International Day to End Impunity, sponsored by the free expression group, IFEX.

“Despite this, the authorities provide no support to journalists, and the perpetrators operate with impunity,” the report said. Journalism in Somalia has reached a state of emergency, said the report. None of these crimes are investigated properly, much less prosecuted, despite successive administrations, the report said.

No action has ever been taken following a case of violence against a Somali journalist, the report said.

Journalists are being targeted to silence them from speaking against corruption, violence and violations of human rights by radical Islamist groups, said Somali Journalist Mohamed Bashir Hashi.

“We are on the lookout behind our backs every minute because media is getting lots of enemies in Somalia,” said Hashi, a reporter with the local Shabelle radio in Somalia.

Somalia’s government should implement judicial reforms that will aid free and fair trials, as well as provide judicial protection for the media and ensure that police adhere to the law, according to the report titled “Impunity: War on Somali Journalists.” The international community can assist Somalia’s federal government to put in place effective and functional public law and order, the report said.

Somalia has made significant strides politically this year in trying to establish its first functional government to move the country away from its failed state status.

A new interim constitution has been passed, a new parliament was seated and a new president was voted in. Somali elders were tasked with naming the parliament since no election could be held, given the state of security around the country. Parliament in turn elected a new president who named a prime minister, who announced his cabinet earlier this month.

Although Somalia has had transitional administrations since 2004, it has not had a functioning central government since 1991, when warlords overthrew a longtime dictator and turned on each other, plunging the impoverished nation into chaos. The transitional governments lacked legitimacy and were accused of corruption.

The parliament last week voted to reduce the Cabinet to 10 members, in a sign Somalia’s government may be willing to move away from its corrupt past.

African Union troops have helped to push Islamist extremists called al-Shabab out of all Somalia’s major cities, giving the newly elected government a chance to rebuild the country.

The International Federation of Journalist says the al-Qaida-affiliated al-Shabaab has a bloody record of maiming and killing journalists who do not toe their line.

With Hizbul-Islam, another hardline insurgent group, they have in recent years ratcheted up pressure on radio stations, first and foremost to ascertain their authority on what goes on air and, most importantly, to impose Taliban-type commandments on un-Islamic music, ringtones, film and football, said Jim Boumelha, the IFJ president.

Boumelha said September was the bloodiest month as renewed killings of journalists may have been triggered by the recent change of government.

On September 20, suicide bombers blew themselves in a restaurant in Mogadishu killing three journalists and wounding five others. The following day another journalist, Hassan Yusuf Absuge, working for Radio Maanta, was shot dead near his station, Mogadishu. Al-Shabaab claimed that their supporters did it.

“With a new speaker of parliament, a new president and a new cabinet, the Somali journalists and their union expect a new beginning and a fresh commitment to protect journalists and tackle impunity as a priority and to promote the right to free expression,” he said.

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  Associated Press writer Abdi Guled contributed to this report from  Mogadishu, Somalia

 


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There have been no elections in Somalia since 1967 and there won’t be any this year either. But the country has a new parliament (appointed on the advice of clan elders) who have elected a new president, and the new government actually now controls a significant part of the country. The world’s only fully “failed state” may finally be starting to return to normality.A failed state is a horrendous thing: no government, no army, no police, no courts, no law, just bands of armed men taking what they want. Somalia has been like that for more than 20 years, but now there is hope. So much hope that last month the United Nations Security Council partially lifted its embargo on arms sales to Somalia in order to let the new Somali government buy arms, and last week the U.S. government followed suit.The new government replaces the “Transitional Federal Government”, another unelected body that had enjoyed the support of the UN and the African Union for eight pointless years. Then last year a World Bank report demonstrated the sheer scale of its corruption: seven out of every ten dollars of foreign aid vanished into the pockets of TFG officials before reaching the state’s coffers.Fully a quarter of the “national budget” was being absorbed by the offices of the president, the vice-president and the speaker of parliament. The fact that after all that the TFG still only controlled about one square kilometre (less than one square mile) of Mogadishu, the capital, while the rest of the shattered city was run by the Islamist al-Shabaab militia, an affiliate of al-Qaeda, also contributed to the international disillusionment.That tiny patch of ground, moreover, was being defended not by Somali troops but by thousands of Ugandan and Burundian soldiers of the African Union Mission in Somalia (Unisom). More than 500 of them had lost their lives defending the useless TFG, and the foreign donors were losing faith in the mission. But the Unisom soldiers did achieve one major thing: they fought al-Shabaab to a standstill in Mogadishu.In August 2011 the Islamist militia pulled its troops out of the capital. That created an opening, and the international community seized it. It ruthlessly initiated a process designed to push the TFG aside: Somali clan elders were asked to nominate members for a new 250-seat parliament, which was then asked to vote for a new president and government.It was obviously impossible to hold a free election in a country much of which was still under al-Shabaab’s control, but this process also had the advantage that it allowed the foreigners to shape the result. The corrupt officials who had run the old TFG all re-applied for their old jobs, but none of them succeeded.The new president who emerged from this process, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, is a former academic and human rights worker who only entered politics in 2011. No whiff of corruption clings to him, and he has worked tirelessly to bring about national reconciliation. And he has the wind at his back: just after he was chosen last September, a Kenyan force evicted al-Shebaab from Somalia’s second city, Kismayo.That still leaves about 95 percent of the country’s territory and three-quarters of its population beyond the government’s direct control. Al-Shabaab still rules in most rural parts of the country, and Ethiopian troops and their militia allies control much of the western border areas. Pirates with a lot of guns and money effectively dominate much of the north.One whole chunk of the country, calling itself Somaliland, has declared its independence (and runs its affairs much more peacefully and efficiently than any other part of Somalia). No other country recognizes its independence at the moment, but it used to be a British colony, quite separate from Italian-ruled Somalia, and in principle it can make exactly the same case for independence as Eritrea did when it broke away from Ethiopia.The worst problem facing President Mohamud is the venal and cunning politicians who have exploited the clan loyalties that pervade every aspect of Somali life to carve out their own little empires. Some are frankly and unashamedly warlords; others, including all the senior officials in the defunct TFG, masquerade as national politicians but work for their own interests.They have not gone away, nor have the clan rivalries that kept the fighting going for 21 years. Drawing up the rules and sharing out the power for a new federal Somalia (none of which has yet been decided) will give them plenty of opportunities to make trouble for the new president and regain their former power. Mohamud definitely has his work cut out for him.Nevertheless, he has strong UN and African Union support, and he now has a chance to create a spreading zone of peace in the country and start rebuilding national institutions. So last week the United States declared that it was now willing to provide military aid, including arms exports, to Somalia. Weirdly, that actually means that thing are looking up in the world’s only failed state.Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.