Since their invasions of the regions of
Sool, Sanaag, and Cayn, (now the Khatumo State of Somalia) in October
2007 and their occupation of Laas caanood, the capital of the SSC
regions, oppression of the people and suppression of the media had been
Somaliland's main weapons of terror and clan colonisation: weapons
aimed at cowing the defenceless population to submission and
suppressing any news coverage of their actions. In the face of a defiant
population, determined to resist the one clan colonisation, occupation
and secession, the occupiers had resorted to heinous crimes including
targeted assassinations, indiscriminate detentions and imprisonments,
land grabbing, ethnic-cleansing and outright massacres of nomads and
captured prisoners at the clashes in Kalshaale and Sool Joogto in the
Buuhoodle region. Not even school children have been spared, who, when
they exercise their inalienable God-given right to oppose the secession
and defend the union, are bundled into prisons or taken away to
notorious detention centres in the secessionist enclave. This measure
is used both as a deterrent to discourage other children from engaging
in anti occupation activities and as a moral blackmail against all
parents and the wider public not to oppose the occupation and their
secession.
In their self-defeating campaign to impose news
blackouts on the opposition to the secession in the SSC regions ever
reaching the outside world, the authority in Hargeisa has made
well-nigh impossible the work of local journalists and stringers
reporting for Somali satellite TV stations in the UK and other media.
When all other restrictive punitive actions have failed to dissuade the
journalists from performing their duties, the Somaliland authority has
once again taken a leaf out of al-Shabab's book. Just as the Jihadists
forcefully impose their fanatical ideology on an unwilling population,
so are the secessionists forcing their treacherous senseless secession
on all the other four recalcitrant unionist clans in northern Somalia.
And just as al-Shababab assassinates
journalists to thwart negative reporting on its activities, so has
Somaliland now followed suit. The first victim of this strategy is
25-year-old Ahmed Farah Sakin, a reporter for the Somali London-based Universal TV station.
His murder is meant to to serve as a lesson for others. Three
assailants, reportedly wearing government military uniforms, shot him
as he was returning to his home. His crime in the eyes of Somaliland
was to report on widespread demonstrations in Lascanod and other places
in the SSC regions in support of the appointment of the new Prime
Minister and jubilation at the recent positive developments taking
place in Mogadishu. Such instantaneous public actions, displaying
support for Somalia and conversely opposition to the secession, is
nationally commendable but for Somaliland it is an anathema, a
punishable treason to their secession, itself a high treason of the
union!
Following this abominable murder of the
journalist, anonymous threatening messages were sent to other reporters
warning them that similar fate awaits them if they remain anywhere
within Somaliland's reach in its occupied parts of the SSC regions. Not
surprisingly, and as they envisaged, all remaining journalists have
run for their lives and left the region. The international community has
hitherto paid little attention to Somaliland's violations of human
rights and the crimes against humanity it consistently committed in the
SSC regions. Most culpable is the United Nations' International Expert
on the Human Right's Situation in Somalia for his dereliction of his
duties to monitor and report on these human rights abuses. Whereas
international human rights NGOs, such as Human Rights Watch,
admirably cover Somaliland's human rights violations in the SSC
regions, the International Expert by contrast has been doing nothing
more than cosying up to Somaliland, Puntland and the defunct TFG as if
personal PR was a substitute for human rights defence.
It is therefore to the credit of the British
Ambassador to Somalia, His Excellency Ambassador Matt Bough, wielding
the historical weight of his government as the former colonial power in
the area, and whose government has in the past been much maligned for
mollycoddling the secessionists, that he should so quickly and
unequivocally intervene to condemn this dastardly targeted
assassination of the journalist and to demand from the occupying
Somaliland authority to bring the perpetrators to justice.
UN SRSG, ambassador Augustine Mahiga, always
eager to show he is in charge of Somalia, has also joined the chorus
of condemnations of this vile act. That, however, would not atone for
his previous blatant support for the secession (at one time when
overwhelmed by their hospitality in Hargeisa, he took leave of
diplomatic prudence by singing the praise of the secession and publicly
calling for their recognition!), or the number of times when he rode
roughshod over the rights of the SSC regions. One such occasion was
during the selection of Parliamentarians when he shamelessly colluded
with Faroole of Puntland in depriving Khatumo State of Somalia the
selection of all its allotted MPs. Now that he is true to his mandate
for a change, it is gratifying to see him bow to the new wind of change
blowing in Somalia.
The people of Khatumo had made sacrifices in the past to oppose foreign
colonisers and again defended the union unaided against the
secessionists in the absence of a functioning Somali government. Now
that Somalia has a government, the job of defending the country and its
unity is primarily that of its government. It is time therefore for
President Hassan to get his priorities right. Lascanod matters more
than Kismayo which seems to lately consume most of his attention.
Kismayo and the Jubaland regions after all will always remain part of
Somalia. And left to themselves by outsiders, (above all Kenya), the
locals are able to come to a harmonious inclusive win-win consensual
arrangement for running their region in conformity with the provisional
constitution. Lascanod unlike Kismayo is the linchpin holding together
the union of former Italian Somaliland and British Somaliland. His
choice between Kismayo and Lascanod will be a testament of whether he
favours: local issues or the more existential national determining
Somalia's unity. The priority of the Somali people, other than the
secessionists, is quite clear: it is unity, pure and simple. As their
elected president, he should follow their wish and hence provide
leadership and moral and material support for the liberation of
Lascanod from its occupying renegades.
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