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By Dr. Abdishakur Jowhar
"The Road Not Taken," Robert Frost
“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
On July 17, 2004, the minister of interior of Somaliland released a
ministerial edict essentially prohibiting Somalilanders from speaking
about the future of their nation in groups. The ministerial document
reads as follows (I translate this from Somali):
“Because of the delicate circumstances the nation is passing through,
and because there are conspiracies being hatched to destroy the peace
and to set the people of Somaliland against each other using people
who are part of us, using foreign agencies and also national
agencies, meetings and discussions related to political issues are
prohibited starting July 17, 2004.”
One must note a couple of points of here:
First the president of the state H.E. Dahir Rayale Kahin publicly
supported both the letter and spirit of his Minister’s edict in a
press conference he held in his office in July 20, 2004. This makes
the minister’s command a state policy supported at the highest
office.
Second: What constitutes ‘A group” is left intentionally or otherwise
in darkness. The current definition appears to be groups of 2 or more
people meeting for “discussions related to political issues”. There
is of course the possibility that the definition of the term ”groups”
could be redefined by the state as being composed of one person with
the “wrong” thoughts. With “wrongness” of the opinion and its degree
becoming a function of the appropriate state organ.
The edict prohibits free speech. The state of course tries to sugar
coat that prohibition so that it will be easier for us the masses to
swallow it. In its defense of this prohibition the Somaliland
government repeatedly insists that it is not a prohibition of free
speech. We would like to believe the government. However the edict
reads “…meetings and discussions related to political issues are
prohibited starting July 17, 2004”. Furthermore the Somaliland
government has spent a lot of political and economic capital in
actually preventing meetings from taking place in Burao. There is a
problem here for the government of the day; a wall is a wall, it is
not sometimes a wall and other times a flower or a cup. The
government’s insistence that “prohibition of meetings and
discussions” does not mean prohibition reminds me of George Orwell's
1984, Ministry of Truth (Minitrue) whose main function was to
manipulate language so that the party line is always true even when
it is not. May be the current administration doesn’t know that free
speech is precisely about protecting undesirable and controversial
speech, that it is all about protecting that which those in power
(like them) don’t like to hear. Maybe our leaders do not know that
singing “Guulwade Siyaad” is not free speech, but the opposite of
free speech. The Minister’s edict makes July 17, 2004 perhaps one of
the darkest days in the history of Somaliland after its rebirth in
1991 notwithstanding the state’s claim to the contrary.
Let there be no doubt July 17, 2004 coincides and is equally as
sinister as that other day of infamy; July 17, 1989 when innocent men
were rounded up and massacred by a criminal dictator with the
blatantly false justification of “conspiracies being hatched…” and
the obvious goal of physically eliminating as many gallant
Somalilanders as his bloody hands can reach.
July 17, 2004 signifies the beginning of our people losing their
freedom; on this day no one was killed, maimed or imprisoned. Yet it
is ominous for it carries within it the seeds of a totalitarian state
and the beginnings of a monster. July 17, 1989 was day of blood, gore
and death of the innocent and brave. July 17, 1989 is what happens
when people accept the loss of their freedom; it’s the unleashed
angst of a dying totalitarian system, it is the claws of a tyrannical
monster. The two days are linked together by fate not only in numbers
(7, 17) but also in nature.
Some may say that I am taking this way out of proportion. Some may
insist that I am an alarmist. A close friend of mine whose opinions I
give serious respect reminded me that indeed at each of the 14 Somali
Reconciliation Conference some one has organized a similar kind of a
meeting with the hidden agenda of making themselves a Somaliland
delegation to wherever such a conference was being held to get
whatever little crumbs are thrown their way. May be the state has the
right to be cautious in this regard, he maintained.
I differ fundamentally with my respected colleague. From time
immemorial totalitarian regimes have ruled by perpetually hunting for
an imaginary traitor, a traitor who is known only to the state and
who must be rooted out at all costs, even at the cost of suspending
the constitution and criminalizing freedom.
This “closet traitor” that is hiding everywhere, ready to jump out at
the right moment, has always been a transparently poor excuse for a
tyranny to trample on the rights of the citizenry. I call this
bogeyman traitor and the best friend of tyranny. Somalilanders have
reached consensuses to regain their freedom in Burao in May of 1991.
Burao is the cradle of Somaliland nationalism. It is a city of
heroes. And Burao is standing up for the nation’s freedom once more!
Prohibiting the freedom to assemble and speak in Burao does nothing
for the security of the nation; it only destroys a nation’s inner
self. The right way of dealing with a traitor is to bring him to a
court of law, to prove his guilt or innocence and to be dealt with
accordingly. Do it this way and the whole nation will be behind the
state, no exceptions.
One does not have to look far to find amble evidence in Somaliland’s
political landscape to know that this administration has taken a
wrong turn and has by design but most likely by error taken a ride on
the wild horse of despotism.
On May 18, 2004 dozens of young men and women who participated in a
public and peaceful demonstration against widespread corruption were
imprisoned by the state and given various prison sentences by an
emergency court. A Somalilander Website (Awdalnews) interviewed
Somaliland’s Minister of Interior on May 30, 2004. Here is that
interchange, I have translated it from Somali as closely as I can. I
bring this to you today because I think it does shed a light on the
recent behavior of the Somaliland state and it brings to light the
falsity of whole idea of the “Bogey Man Traitor”
Awdalnews Question: “ A lot of people are asking why the youth who
demonstrated on May 18 where taken to an emergency court, they say
this whole issue reminds the public of hard line courts of the
extremist regime of the past (meaning the dictatorship of Siyad
Barre)? As the Minister of Interior how do you explain this?”
The Minister’s Answer: "First demonstrations are not prohibited by
our laws, but our people must understand the times we live in and the
power of our police. The question then is can we allow demonstration?
Even though (the right to demonstrate) is in our constitution and
laws? To be honest the answer is no, we can not allow any thing that
calls itself a demonstration until our police have a force that is
similar to that of the rest of the world, all demonstrations contain
within them disorder and crime" italics mine.
The minister clearly holds that in his opinion he can put the
constitution on hold until he has enough police force (which may take
few years, may be even few decades?). This cavalier remark on the
weighty matter of the law of the land is a clear symptom of
Somaliland’s regression towards totalitarianism.
Only a thin line of defenders of freedom guards us from the
establishment of a tyrant riding a banana republic. Today Dr. Bulhan
stands tall like a tower of light and courage. He is out there in the
pit defending our nation’s hard won freedom from monsters that lurk
in darkness. On May 18, 2004 our young people came out in droves to
protect us from corruption and clean our government and to willingly
feed their young bodies to the hungry prisons that seem to be
cropping up in the middle of the night like monsters in a nightmare.
It is the courage of the young, it is the tenacity of Bulhan and his
colleagues, it is the heroic intellectuals of Burao and the
persistent journalists repeatedly imprisoned in the dungeons of
Borama who are our saviors. Our embattled defenders of freedom suffer
so that the rest of us can live free, so that our nation can remain a
shining light in a region that is dark even at noon. They have
listened to Robert Frost and they have taken the road “ less traveled
by”, the road of defending freedom, of standing up when it is time to
be counted and of peaceful resistance. Who ever thought freedom comes
cheap! Today we must all say loud and clear: We are all Bulhan. We
are all Burao Intellectuals.
And while we do that we should remember the important principle of
presumption of honesty on the side of our state. I mean we should
take the stand that our government had the honest intention of
withholding law and order and in their zeal and because they are only
human like the rest of us, they made a grave error of judgment. We
will have to strive hard to correct their error through our
well-established system of dialogue, pressure and consultation. In
this process we must hold on to the principle of presumption of
honesty because it makes dialogue possible and civil and because it
prevents the unnecessary and counter productive polarization of
society.
We will make our government follow the rule of law. In the words of
the great Liberator Joe Slovo (head of the armed wing of the ANC
“Umkoto we Sizwe”) we will force democracy down the throat of our
state. We will help our elected leaders dismount from the wild horse
of tyranny and resist the temptations and corruption of power.
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