An international rights group on Monday urged Somali Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein, who is struggling to gain control over his nation, to ensure reporters rights are protected in the increasingly volatile Horn of Africa state.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) urged the premier to ”end the ongoing pattern of countrywide arbitrary arrests and threats by the government and security officials against Somali journalists.”
Last week, Nur pledged to put an end to a crackdown against journalists and vowed to restore press freedoms.
”It is within your power to put an end to this harassment, which is contrary to international standards of press freedom. As you recently expressed, it is time to end these abuses,” the CPJ’s chief, Joel Simon, said in a letter to the prime minister.
The CPJ said it had documented 22 separate cases in 2007, over half of them in Mogadishu, of government officials and security forces arresting and threatening journalists in an effort to suppress national and international coverage.
At least eight journalists — seven of them in violent circumstances — were killed in Somalia last year, making Somalia the second worst country in the world for reporters after Iraq.
The Somali capital, Mogadishu, has been wracked by violence between Ethiopian-backed government forces and Islamist insurgents, forcing the government to remained hunkered down in the town of Baidoa. — Sapa-AFP