somaliland

New York, September 9, 2009—Police should release Mohamed Osman, director of Radio Horyaal, who has been held without charge since his arrest on Saturday outside parliament in Hargeisa, capital of the breakaway republic of Somaliland, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

New York, August 24, 2009--The Committee to Protect Journalists called today for an end to an ongoing government crackdown on independent journalists in Somaliland.

New York, July 22, 2009--The Committee to Protect Journalist condemns the government's growing crackdown on the independent press in the northern breakaway republic of Somaliland as September presidential elections near. 

JUNE 22, 2008
Posted July 30, 2008

Abdifatah Mursal, Ogaal
Faisal Mohamed, Heegan
ATTACKED

Presidential guards beat two newspaper reporters from the northern breakaway republic of Somaliland on June 22, according to the editor of one of the papers. Abdifatah Mursal from the private Ogaal and Faisal Mohamed from the private Heegan were attacked by presidential guards while taking photos of Somaliland President Dahir Rayale Kahin, the editor of Heegan told CPJ.

More than 80 journalists flee their home countries in the last year. Iraq and Somalia are the hardest hit. By Elisbeth Witchel and Karen Phillips

Attacks had become so pervasive in this conflict-riven state that the National Union of Somali Journalists described 2006 as "the most dangerous year for press freedom for more than a decade." Then came 2007--a year in which conditions grew dramatically worse.

With seven journalists killed in direct relation to their work, Somalia was the deadliest place for the press in Africa and second only to Iraq worldwide. The deaths came amid widespread violence in this Horn of Africa state, which has had no effective central government since 1991. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reported that nearly 600,000 people had fled during the year, as the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), backed by Ethiopian troops, clashed repeatedly with the militias of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), a coalition of fundamentalist law courts that had held power for six months in 2006.

New York, December 18, 2007—CPJ is concerned for the safety of award-winning French journalist Gwen LeGouil, who was kidnapped just outside the port town of Bossasso on Sunday by five unknown gunmen in Somalia’s semi-autonomous northeastern region of Puntland. LeGouil is being held hostage in a mountainous area with no access to medicine or clean drinking water, according to Abdirisak Omar from the National Union of Somali Journalists in Bossasso.

New York, December 5, 2007--CPJ condemns the Somaliland authorities' decision to expel 24 Somali journalists from Hargeisa, the capital of the northern breakaway republic. The group had recently fled there to escape ongoing persecution in Mogadishu, Somalia.

Yesterday, Somaliland Police Chief General Mohammed Saqadhi Dubad and the head of the Criminal Investigations Department, General Ahmed Ali Shabel, ordered the 24 exiled journalists to leave Somaliland within 24 hours. Negotiations with Somaliland's foreign minister and human rights organizations today have allowed the journalists to stay in Hargeisa until Sunday.

November 29, 2007
Posted January 10, 2008

 

JUNE 28, 2006
Posted August 10, 2007 Abdirahman Muse Omar,
Somaliland Television
IMPRISONED

Omar, a news editor for private broadcaster Somaliland Television in the northern breakaway republic of Somaliland, was assaulted on June 28 by Mayor Hussein Muhammud Jiir after seeking official comments about the police’s expulsion of a family and the destruction of their home in the capital, Hargeysa, according to news reports and local journalists. He was then arrested.