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Heinous Crime Would Haunt Somaliland
By Ali Gulaid, San Jose, California
“A lone gunman leaned on a tree and shot Dr. Annalena Tonelli, in the breakaway republic of Somaliland” announced the National Public Radio, in San Jose, California. Likewise, the San Jose Mercury News carried the tragic killing of Dr. Tonelli on its front pages. The sad news blazed through out the various Somaliland diaspora websites, the United Nations and the European Union corridors like fire.
The international community took note. In the United States, the national newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post, much less the local newspapers seldom carry international news but the fact that the killing of Dr. Tonelli took both the airwaves and the print media in a place as unmetropolitan as San Jose indicates the importance of the work Dr. Tonelli has volunteered, the admiration she earned from the international community by devoting her life to attend the sick, the needy, the marginalized and the disabled in a remote and non-descript place called Somaliland.
Dr. Tonelli was 60 years young when she was brutally gunned down; she arrived that part of the world in 1969. She studied to be lawyer but has ended up in the medical profession where her heart was. According to a friend and a colleque of hers, Dr. Tonelli’s approach towards the sick was more comprehensive than just dispensing medication. She ritualized in ensuring that the sick take the prescribed medications as timely and as often as required, encouraged the involvement of the family and breached the love and respect the sick and the dying deserve and stressed how caring and keeping company to the sick could lessen the pain and the suffering.
Dr.Tonelli’s goal in life was to give a hand to the ones less fortunate than herself. By sheer devotion, persistence, and selflessness, she has built single handedly an organization that has gown in size throughout her life, which has successfully combated disease, hunger and malnutrition. Apart from the publicized tuberculosis hospitals and the medical contribution, which she is more known for, she has established schools for the deaf and the blind. She has shunned city amenities and a privileged life, luxury, fame and fortune to improve the health of the sick and to empower the disabled.
Strange as it seems, she has sacrificed for people that offered her nothing in return, for people she doesn’t share with religion, culture, country or language. Nothing. After exhausting her funds, she has appealed, peddled and persuaded the rich to give to the poor.
It was due to her credit and selflessness that the international community trusted her to deliver the donations to the truly needy without strings attached. It took her over thirty years to build that reputation and organization but it took only one gunshot to destroy her life time achievement. Even though her life was cut short by one of the people she has relentlessly sacrificed for, her work to make a difference has touched us all directly or indirectly.
But what was the motive? I don’t know. But I can’t help entertaining may be, just may be, being Christian has something to do with it. In a culture that isn’t known for religious tolerance, such a thought isn’t that far off the mark. Now, that is moot. It is even more painful to imagine the prospects of those Ms. Tonelli adopted and cared: the sick, the abandoned, the blind, the deaf and the poor. These are the ones that are orphaned as a result. In a culture where the disabled are mocked and the sick stigmatized, Dr. Tonelli touched, cared, comforted and treated them. For sure, life will never be the same for the ones that needed her care and compassion.
But the killing of Dr. Tonelli is only one out of many recent killings and violent incidents that have rocked a nation that boasts of peace, stability and rule of law as her admirable qualities worthy of recognition. On her pursuit of recognition, Somaliland differentiates and markets herself as the antithesis of Somalia, where killing, kidnapping, rape and lawlessness has become the norm. It wasn’t too long ago that a Swiss investor was gunned down not in a back alley but a well lit crowded street in the capital; it wasn’t too long ago that some showered a hail of gunfire in an NGO full of expatriates in Erigavo; it wasn’t too long ago that a respected professor was shot down on a daylight right in front of the Ministry of security- Interior. But what adds an insult to these heinous crimes is that the villains haven’t been apprehended. Some argue that this is the tip of the iceberg; others blame it on conspiracy to defame and derail the aspirations of Somaliland. Conspiracy, it isn’t; a prelude of what is to come may be. But there is no argument that the indelible stain the senseless killings has stamped on the record of Somaliland. These killings aren’t isolated unfortunate incidents; rather they are part of a disturbing pattern that is wiping out the hard earned goodwill. Contrary to what the Minister of security said on an interview he gave to the B.B.C recently, such killings are neither normal nor is it justified to blame it on non-recognition as he did.
The reality is that the law and order broke down and the will to fix it isn’t there. The current administration is transfixed on hunting down the opposition, the curbing of freedom of speech, the institutionalization of corruption, the misappropriation of public funds and the appeasement of “afmiishar” by doling out ministerial positions, which Somaliland can ill-afford.
But one thing is for sure; the killing of Dr. Tonelli has scarred the “pretty face” of Somaliland and it would be hard for the international community to look at that face when it comes to review the recognition status. Rest assured the killing of Dr. Tonelli would be albatross that would dog Somaliland for a long time to come. Sadly, the dissimilarities between Somaliland and Somalia are getting blurred by the day.
Had I the eloquence of Jama Cali Haabiil or Gaariye, I would have memorialized Dr. Tonelli with poetic lamentation but all I can do is to moan and ask why, why, why?
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