English PDF - East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders ...

24Journalists on the Frontline of Human Rights DefenceDetention of journalists for writing anything criticizing the Government was part of the life ofjournalists. This trend reached its climax when the Government confiscated all the duplicatingmachines, typewriters of the 3 private newspapers and put 10 journalists in Hargeisa main prisonin 1992 and held them in custody for 21 days.There are no laws and regulations that forbid or restrict the registration of new privately ownedmedia be it electronic or the press but there is an unwritten law that has so far denied the openingof privately owned radio stations. Political parties and individuals are denied license or permit toopen radio stations in the country.Two reasons for such a discrepancy and setback for free media in Somaliland are:• The only state-owned radio is to cover the whole country.• Fear that the opposition might use radio, the most effective medium, for their goals as theterritory covered by the print media or the 3 TV stations (2 private and 1 state-owned) isvery limited.As a result of the absence of free and privately owned radio stations in the country political partysupported radio and individually owned radio stations were opened abroad.The media in Somaliland has greater freedom than in most of the countries in the developingworld and many in the advanced countries. Their major shortcoming is that they are morepoliticized – due to the nature of the people – and as such their coverage of other subjects islimited.Journalists are abused or threatened and sometimes detained for a day or two. But there are somewho have been jailed for months:Mr. Hassan Saed who was Chief Editor of Jamhuuriya has been arrested 14 times, before hehanded the post to someone else.Mr. Yusuf Gabobe, owner and Chief Editor of Somaliland Times, has been frequently harassedby the police. He was accused and taken to court, but his case is still pending for a long time. Thisis to keep him under tension and a means to restrict his criticism.Mr. Abdirahman Mohamed Habane, a reporter of Jamhuuriya in Awdal Region has been indetention for more than a month in Borama prison. As far as we are aware he is the onlyjournalist that has been tortured while in captivity.Journalists arrested for either articles in the public opinion section or editorials are very few; butthe strange thing is that those arrested if not released, when they appear before the judge, they aretold they have a pending case in court. This is the new trend followed.There are 3 Journalists’ Associations in the country. One is a Women Journalists’ Associationestablished this year. The Somaliland Journalists Association (SOLJA) has journalist membersboth from the free media and state media, while the Society for independent Journalists andWriters (SSJW) has writers and journalists from the free media as members.The associations have links with media and international organizations. Different organizationsincluding UN organizations have provided training opportunities to Somaliland journalists andBBC has completed a 2-year training financed by the European Union early this year. This wasthe most comprehensive training given to journalists in Somaliland but unfortunately only one ofthe two organizations benefited from it.