Censorship Introduced at Government Owned Media

Hargeisa (SL Times): President Rayale’s government has introduced censorship at the two media outlets it controls.

Although it has been the norm for managers at government-owned media to suppress all information deemed by them as critical of, or embarrassing to the incumbent Administration, the government has more recently embarked on a policy of complete censorship of all material issued by the official media.

Most affected by the new policy have been news and music broadcasts by Radio Hargeisa, as well as coverage of politically-related events and affairs by the Somali language newspaper Maandeeq.

Already a number of program producers and broadcasters working for Radio Hargeisa have been strongly reprimanded by their supervisors after they were accused of releasing commentaries and songs that allegedly carried anti-government messages of political nature, sources within the Ministry of Information said.

The restrictions were believed to have been imposed by the Somaliland Minister of Information, Abdillahi Mohamed Duale.

To demonstrate how serious he was, Mr. Duale has even reportedly ordered deletion of all the speeches given by figures from the opposition at a rally held Thursday for the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the 20th February Somaliland school children uprising against the former military regime of Siyad Barre. In one of these speeches, the well-known SNM a veteran Mohamed Kahin accused both Radio Hargeisa and Maandeeq of following a policy of deliberate distortion when running stories on the history of the liberation struggle against dictatorship.

"Their reporting on this issue is so malicious to an extent that even genocide perpetrators like Ganni and Morgan would have felt ashamed of," Kahin said. At this point a woman who was standing close to the podium shouted, "Kahin, I bet they won't broadcast this one."

Interestingly, only a brief speech given by Vice-President Ahmed Yassin on the occasion was broadcast by the government controlled radio.

Opposition parties have long complained that Maandeeq and Radio Hargeisa report in favor of the government. Though Minister Duale promised on many occasions in the past to do something about the opposition’s grievances, he has never taken any practical steps to address them. As a result, the political parties in the opposition have relied heavily on the private press for coverage of their election campaigning. The government has remained tolerant of the fact that opposition parties could still have their opinions and activities covered by the much more popular independent press. This tolerance has apparently dried up after the private media ran stories on President Rayale’s past as former head of the dreadful NSS branch at Berbera during the mid eighties.

Earlier this month, Information Minister Duale had disclosed that the government was about to introduce a press law. The plan has drawn strong protests from the "The Somaliland Society of Independent Journalists And Writers." The SSJW reiterated that there was no need for a special law to govern the press. Instead, it called for the development of a "Journalists' Code of Conduct" by the journalists themselves. Minister Duale responded to this by hastily organizing a "Congress of Somaliland Journalists."

On March 10, the pro-government "Somaliland Journalists Association" or SOLJA was founded. Though in its articles of association Solja is defined as a union, this claim however does not conform to the background of its chosen leaders. Its top 3 executives and the entire executive committee members are either publishers of private newspapers (Jamhuuriya and Al-Huriya) or senior officials from Ministry of Information such as the director of Radio Hargeisa.

The Majority of Journalists working for the government, and the private media outlets that joined the SOLJA have not shown yet any signs of support for the new organization. When some of them expressed desire to join the SSJW, they were warned by Ministry of Information officials that they would lose their jobs if they did. According to one of these journalists, Mr. Duale was prompted to create SOLJA, not only for the marginalization of SSJW but also for accessing donor funding. In fact the Minister has campaigned with some success for obtaining funds from international organizations in the name of strengthening the institutional capacity of his Ministry. The Minister was told by at least one UN organization and the ICD that funds earmarked for supporting media organizations could be made available by them. Many journalists believe one of the main reasons that Mr. Duale wanted to establish SOLJA was to use it as conduit for aid money and for interfering in SSJW.

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