Government Shuts Down ‘Shuronet’ Hargeysa Head Office

Police inside Shuronet office complex on Thursday, 1/11/ 07

Hargeysa, November 3, 2007 (SL Times) – On Thursday morning, Somaliland’s government forced the senior staff of Shuronet, a local human rights umbrella group, to hand over the keys to their head office in Hargeysa.

Police arrived at the group’s headquarters after receiving instructions from the ministry of Justices 'to prevent the current staff and management team of Shuronet from getting access to the organisation’s premises.”

The second highest ranking officer in Somaliland’s police force, Mr Muhamed Shiil Dhidar, took personal charge in supervising Thursday’s 'sting operation’ on the human rights defender's headquarters. The deputy police chief could be heard ordering his men “not to let any one in the umbrella group’s offices and to empty those already inside the building and its compound”.

Police inside Shuronet head office

Senior Shuronet staff were told by the deputy police chief, Dhidar, that “he came to make sure that the group’s new board of directors, Mr Omar Wayab and Mr Suleiman Haquuq, who were standing by his side, to promptly assume control of the group.”

After arguing with the current Shuro Net officers, the deputy police chief said, “ since members of the umbrella group, in last week’s Annual General Meeting (AGM), elected a new board of directors, let them (Wayab and Haquuq) get on with their responsibilities and transfer the group's power of authority over to their persons ”.

According to press reports and the members of the organisation “the government organised last Wednesday (25/10/07) at Ambassador Hotel an extraordinary ‘Shuronet’ meeting (AGM), and installed a new board of directors, in an attempt to get rid of the current Shuronet leadership”.

Staff and colleagues from EU and UN donar agencies left standing outside the group's head office, after the government ordered closure of Shuronet's head office on Thursday.

Shuronet is the largest human rights group in the country, an amalgamation of 70 local NGOs with branch offices operating in all the regions of Somaliland, and has led a vocal campaign in the country over the government’s poor performance and record on human rights, freedom of speech and justice.

Thursday morning’s police siege of the group’s head office drew large crowds of angry ‘Shuronet’ supporters who were prepared to meet the police head-on. This is the second attempt in a week that the police tried to force ‘out of office’ the group’s current leaders and install Mr Wayab and Haquuq in their place.

The deputy police chief, Mr Dhidar, eventually, backed down from the attempted “forceful eviction” of Shuronet’s current board of directors. Instead, he resorted to closing down the organisation's offices because, as he put it, “the group's members are divided about the people representing the board of directors.”

The deputy police chief demanded that he be given the group’s office compound keys and said, “Shuronet office will stay shut until this dispute is resolved by the group and its members.”

The deputy chief ordered his men to keep under lock and key the group’s offices and left a number of armed policemen to guard the premises with the instructions not to let anybody inside the compound and office buildings”, and then drove away, with Mr Wayab and Haquuq folllowing behind in another vehicle.

Source: Somaliland Times