JEDDAH, 31 July 2004 — A candidate for the presidency in Somalia said yesterday he would encourage his supporters to kill Iraqis in Somalia if the Somali truck driver kidnapped in Iraq was beheaded by his captors.
“If they (the Iraqis) behead our loved ones, we will behead their loved ones,” presidential hopeful Hussein Ali Elmi was quoted by news agencies as saying. Elmi dismissed as too soft the Kenyan government’s position of asking their citizens to leave Iraq after three Kenyans were abducted there last week.
Elmi said there were a few hundred Iraqis in Somalia, mainly working as shopkeepers in the capital Mogadishu. Most of them fled Iraq during Saddam Hussein’s rule.
Elmi said, however, that he himself would not behead anybody, but instead would ask his militias to do it.
“There is no other way to defend our people,” he said.
There are 56 presidential candidates for Somalia. A group of around 20 are considered the Young Turks.
Elmi, himself a Young Turk, said that if one of them becomes president, they would want to immediately send Somali troops to assist the new Iraqi government.
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Amnesty International (AI) has said in a statement that Somalia’s planned new government must be committed to respecting human rights, ending abuses and bringing to book perpetrators of past crimes in a country wracked by factional warfare for more than a decade.
The human rights watchdog’s appeal came as the Somali talks in Kenya drew close to creating a transitional federal government that is expected to end 13 years of anarchy and violence. The Somali delegates at the talks were expected to select Parliament members and president.
“A new government will be under obligation to respect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international and regional human rights treaties and conventions, particularly those signed by previous governments of Somalia,” the AI statement said. “Somalia’s new government must be committed to human rights and make a clean break with the gross abuses of the past 30 years, even though some of the perpetrators are still dominating the power-sharing. New human rights abuses must not be tolerated and those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity, committed in the past, must be held accountable.
AI appealed to the international community to give “firm and generous support” for human rights and reconstruction in Somalia. It called for the appointment of a United Nations human rights adviser for the country. “A UN human rights adviser for Somalia is urgently needed. Measures should be taken to implement the frequently violated UN arms embargo and disband faction militias. Child soldiers should be disbanded and rehabilitated,” said the statement.
It called for the creation of safe conditions in Somalia before the return of refugees who fled the insecurity that followed the collapse of the state. “Conditions for safe return and sustainable livelihood for refugees will require major improvements in security, safe humanitarian access and substantial post-conflict reconstruction,” it said.
“There must now be a clear end to the arbitrary killings of civilians, kidnappings, rape and looting, which are still being carried out with total impunity by faction militias and gunmen. The resumption of statehood must guarantee human rights and personal security for all citizens, as they regain a recognized citizenship and return from isolation to the world community of nations,” it added.
At the same time, Martin Hill, Horn of Africa researcher for AI, has told reporters that two Somali asylum seekers deported from the Netherlands and Denmark were killed shortly after arriving in Mogadishu in a case showing the flaws in those countries’ immigration policies. He said the two men were killed by thieves who saw them as strangers without clan ties and therefore easy prey..
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Militiamen at the Sharia Islamic court in Mogadishu have beaten up two Hornafrik radio and TV journalists, who tried to enter the court’s offices in the southern part of the capital, media reports said. The Islamic court’s chairman, however, denied the beatings, saying the journalists were only prevented from entering the court.
“We were attacked after we entered the compound, which was recently converted into Islamic court offices,” one of the journalists, Hassan Kafi Abdurahman was quoted as saying. He said that during the attack, the militia guards destroyed recording material and papers belonging to them. The other journalist, Zeynab Abukar Mohamed, said she was pushed hard until she fell down, but the guards did not assault her further.
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The former first lady of Somalia, Dalayad Haji Hashi Jama, has died in Columbus, USA, at the age of 72, press reports said. According to her relatives, she died in her apartment on Monday of complications from diabetes.
Dalayad was married to former Somali dictator Mohamed Siad Barre for 45 years. After he died in exile in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1995, she joined eight of her children in Columbus, which has the second largest Somali population in the United States.
