October 27, 2015 | Morning Headlines
Somali Govt Fires Mogadishu Mayor After Run-Ins With Security Minister
26 October – Source: Hiiraan Online – 184 Words
Somalia’s government has fired the Mogadishu mayor following prolonged dispute with Security Minister over the closure of a main road in the capital city,officials said Monday. Hassan Mohamed Hussein was fired in a decree from the Office of the Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. He was replaced by Yusuf Hassan Jimale, a close ally of the President. No official reason has been given for his dismissal by the government.
Daud Aweys, Somali President’s spokesman, confirmed the replacement of Mr Hussein, who has been criticized for being corrupt. His removal comes a few weeks after he turned down a request by the United Nations, which sought the government’s approval to close the toll road leading to the Mogadishu International Airport. The UN is located along this road and the move was designed to prevent possible attacks targeting its headquarters. Hussein’s move effectively annulled an earlier approval by the Somali Security Minister, Abdirizak Omar Mohamed.The mayor’s security officers have also dismantled barricades and blast walls erected on the airport road which were meant to to close road. Critics also point out that the mayor’s removal may have been a result of factional dispute within government
Key Headlines
- Somali Govt Fires Mogadishu Mayor After Run-Ins With Security Minister (Hiiraan)
- Fall Out In Somaliland As Six Ministers Resign (Goobjoog News)
- Galmudug Leader Says He Favours Stability In Mudug (Garowe Online)
- Somali Army Clashes With Al-Shabaab Militants In Gedo Province (Shabelle News)
- Galmudug State Launches Own Airstrip In Galkayo (Wacaal Media)
- Police Detain More Than 70 Somali ‘Migrants’ In South Sudan (Radio Tamazuj)
- British Citizens ‘Chained And Beaten’ In Somaliland Mental Health Centres (The Telegraph)
- Somali Police Force And AMISOM Ensuring Safety Through Joint Night Operations (AMISOM)
- College Pleas For Security ‘Ignored’ (Daily Nation)
- Somalia: People With Disabilities Abused Neglected (Human Rights Watch)
NATIONAL MEDIA
Fall Out In Somaliland As Six Ministers Resign
26 October – Source: Goobjoog News – 150 Words
A major political rift has rocked the breakaway state of Somaliland after six ministers and two deputies including the spokesman of the president resigned from office today. The ministers are said to have fallen out with the state’s President, Ahmed Mohamed Mohamoud Silanyo, after he declared support for Musa Bihi Abdi, as Chairman of the ruling party, Kulmiye.
The ministers are Mohamed Bihi Yoonis (Foreign Affairs), Hussein Ahmed (Justice), Hirsi Ali Hajj Hassan (Office of President Minister) Abdi Awdhir (Labour) and Abdirisaq Khalif Ahmed (Public Works and Housing). Others include Reintegration Deputy minister, Nimo Hussein Qowdhan, Ministry of Industry General Director, Moulid Waris Abdullahi and the President’s spokesman, Ahmed Dhuhul. The mass resignations are a culmination of differences within the ruling party, Kulmiye, and are likely to cause cracks both in government and the party as President Silanyo seeks to replace the ministers.
Galmudug Leader Says He Favours Stability In Mudug
26 October- Source: Garowe Online – 131 Words
Interim Galmudug Administration leader Abdikarim Hussein Gulled has said he favors peace and stability following months of tensions in central Mudug region, Garowe Online reports. On return to the south, Gulled expressed his keenness in forging bilateral cooperation in security with Puntland. The Galmudug leader was hopeful that meetings with the Puntland President in Mogadishu was a major breakthrough to the current impasse. He further revealed that his administration had engaged with the Ahlu Sunna Wal Jamea faction, and called on moderate Islamists in Dhusamareb to join the quest for peace. On Al-Shabaab, Gulled seemed optimistic about the recapture of fewer areas remaining under the control of Al-Shabaab militants in central Somalia. Territorial disputes have pushed Galmudug and Puntland into a war of words, with the latter warning of a return to civil war.
Somali Army Clashes With Al-Shabaab Militants In Gedo Province
26 October – Source: Shabelle News – 117 Words
A fierce battle has erupted in Gedo region after Somali army backed by African Union troops attacked a base belonging to Al-Shabaab militants, a resident said on Monday.Speaking on the phone to Radio Shabelle, a local resident confirmed that the allied troops had launched a massive assault on Golweyn village, 35 kms away from Garbaharey city, resulting in an hour-long gunfight.Details of the casualties on both sides still remain sketchy. Golweyn area lies between Luuq and Garbaharey towns near Kenyan border.Over the past few weeks, Somali military soldiers and their allied AMISOM forces have been launching attacks aimed at the weeding out of Al-Shabaab fighters from the Gedo region.
Galmudug State Launches Own Airstrip In Galkayo
26 October – Source: Wacaal Media – 82 Words
The newly formed State of Galmudug has officially launched an airstrip in Southern Galkayo with President Abdikarim Gulleid and a high level delegation arriving in the area for the launch. Former administrator Abdi Qaybdid was also among notable dignitaries that arrived using the airstrip that was named Ushaka. The airstrip becomes the second one in the city of Galkayo and will now give Galmudug officials their own landing space as they previously shared one with their Puntland colleagues — the Abdullahi Yussuf Airstrip.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Police Detain More Than 70 Somali ‘Migrants’ In South Sudan
26 October – Source: Radio Tamazuj – 455 Words
Northern Bahr al Ghazal State’s police have confirmed that they stopped 74 Somalis who were passing through the state intending to cross into Sudan. The police identified them as “migrants” rather than terrorist fighters as elsewhere reported. Speaking to Radio Tamazuj today, State Police Commissioner Mariing Deng Akuei said they arrested 74 Somali nationals.
“They are Somalis, they are migrants who came from Somalia,” he said. “I think some of them previously served in the army or what I do not know because some of them had army ID cards of Somalia, while some of them were moving without passports,” he added. He said that 55 of them are men and the other 19 are women, describing them as young between the ages of 21 and 30.
Mariing said that the suspects were arrested by the Criminal Investigation Department, saying they were found in one house hired by a Somali. “The Somali man hired the house so that those people could stay with him, to receive them from the airport and receive those from the checkpoint in order to accommodate them and then sneak to the north at night, so this is the goal,” he explained. He claimed that their activities started since 2012, saying the police in Aweil were ordered by the Passports and Immigration office in Juba to carry out investigations.
“So after the investigations, we proved that those people were moving without any documents, it is dangerous, we handed them over to the authorities of Western Bahr al Ghazal and police commissioner there,” he said. The police official’s remarks follow statements by the Minister of Cabinet Affairs in Juba Martin Elia Lomuro who said after a cabinet meeting Friday that the country’s national interior ministry had reported “potential presence of Al-Shabaab and other Islamic organizations in our country.”
“Apparently they (ministry of interior) have identified and apprehended 76 people who are of Kenyan and Somali origin who were caught trying to cross into Sudan from South Sudan,” Lomuro was quoted as saying. However, Mariing did not say that the arrested Somalis belonged to Al-Shabab terror group, only saying, “We have fears if we could allowed them [to continue their travels], they could have joined international terror organizations.” He said that the Somalis have been taken southward to Western Bahr al Ghazal State after which they would be dealt with by national authorities so that they could be reunited with their families in Somalia.
British Citizens ‘Chained And Beaten’ In Somaliland Mental Health Centres
26 October – Source: The Telegraph- 650 Words
British citizens are among hundreds of mentally-ill patients enduring prison-like conditions in hospitals in Somaliland where they are routinely chained, beaten and abused, a new report claims.The Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released on Monday found a proliferation of private healthcare facilities across the semi-autonomous region in the Horn of Africa were holding people either against their will or in terrible conditions.
Laetitia Bader, the report’s author, told the Telegraph men from the British Diaspora were among hundreds stuck in private centres in the capital Hargeisa having been sent there by their families to deal with drug abuse or mental health issues.Britain is the leading donor to the country’s health sector and had a responsibility to ensure humane mental health care was among the provisions, she added.“The diaspora are paying to lock up relatives they can’t deal with. One man from Cardiff had been inside a private centre for over a year,” she said.“If these men really have mental health conditions, you who would have thought they’d be better served locally or by the National Health Service.”
Somalia has been considered a failed state due to decades of fighting. Somaliland, a former British protectorate on Somalia’s north-western coast, declared independence from Somalia in 1991 but has never been formally recognised by any other country.Considered relatively peaceful, it is home to an under-resourced and dilapidated public health system which it is trying to overhaul but has largely outsourced mental health care
Somali Police Force And AMISOM Ensuring Safety Through Joint Night Operations
26 October – Source: AMISOM – 273 Words
The Somali Police Force together with the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) Police component are engaging in tactical night operations, aimed at ridding Mogadishu of criminal elements. These include joint night patrols, cordon and search operations as well as mounting snap checkpoints targeting night motorists; as AMISOM mentors and empowers SPF to independently carry out operations.
According to Abbedi Samuel, the AMISOM Police the Formed Police Unit commander, vehicles are searched for all forms of dangerous items including Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs): “We have been recovering so many things like guns and even arresting the suspected Al-Shabaab and that’s a result of this cordon and search,” he says. Corporal Noor Abdi from the Somali Police Force says the two enjoys a good working relationship that has been the basis of the success attained today.
“We work very well with AMISOM. We support each other in the conduct of the work. They come to us, we go to them,” he says. AMISOM Police has a mandate to provide operational support to the Somali Police Force through mentoring police officers in order to build the capacity of the SPF to perform policing functions according to international policing standards. Superintendent of Police Akande Abubakar Aliu from the AMISOM Police says they will not relent in the efforts to restore peace and stability in Mogadishu and Somalia in general.
College Pleas For Security ‘Ignored’
25 October – Source: Daily Nation – 411 Words
The principal of Kenya’s Garissa University College sent at least five requests to senior government officials for a security boost prior to the April 2 terrorist attack on the institution, says a United Nations report. According to the document, released on Friday, the authorities did not heed Dr Ahmed Osman Warfa’s pleas. Al-Shabaab gunmen killed 147 people, mostly students, at the college in the worst terrorist attack in Kenya since the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi that claimed 212 lives.
The UN report cites a text message received by a senior police officer in Wajir less than 12 hours before the attack, warning that Al-Shabaab insurgents 30 kilometres from the town were poised to strike either the Garissa University College or the Garissa Teachers Training College: “This message was not transmitted to Warfa until over a month after the fact,” says the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea’s report to the Security Council.
“Since Kenyan police evidently possessed the intelligence, it is unclear why it was neither acted upon, for example, by heightening the police presence in or near the university nor transmitted to the administrators of the targeted institutions,” the report adds. “A regional security source summarised the problem when he told the monitoring group that in the Kenyan security forces, there is a ‘disconnect between the collection of intelligence and the use of intelligence.’”
This disconnect was also a factor in the failure to prevent the Westgate Shopping Mall attack in September 2013, the monitors observe. The police did send Dr Warfa an SMS alert in the evening of March 31, warning of a possible attack on educational institutions in the area. However, the message advised recipients only to “be alert”, Dr Warfa told the UN team. The principal said the text message was similar to others he regularly received.
OPINION, ANALYSIS, AND CULTURE
“Somaliland does not keep official data on the prevalence of mental health conditions, but existing research points to alarmingly high levels because of violence and trauma from the civil war, lack of health services, and widespread use of the amphetamine-like stimulant khat”
Somalia: People With Disabilities Abused, Neglected
26 October – Source: Human Rights Watch – 1,092 Words
People with mental health conditions in Somaliland are increasingly forced into institutions, where they face serious abuses and poor conditions. The Somaliland authorities should provide oversight for all mental health facilities, prohibit chaining, and establish voluntary community-based services for people with mental health conditions.
The 81-page report, “‘Chained Like Prisoners’: Abuses Against People with Psychosocial Disabilities in Somaliland,” finds that men with perceived or actual psychosocial disabilities face abusive restraints, beatings, involuntary treatment, and overcrowding in private and public health centers. Most are held against their will and have no possibility of challenging their detention. In private centers in particular, those with psychosocial disabilities face punitive and prolonged chaining, confinement, seclusion, and severe restrictions on their movement. The findings highlight the importance of mental health services in post-conflict regions. According to the World Health Organization, Somaliland has high rates of psychosocial disability.
“Rather than providing appropriate and voluntary medical care or rehabilitation, these centers subject residents to prison-like regulations, isolation, and involuntary treatment,” said Laetitia Bader, Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Somaliland authorities should act quickly to address the abuses inside mental health institutions.”
Human Rights Watch conducted research in Hargeisa, Berbera, and Gabiley, and interviewed over 115 people, including 47 with actual or perceived disabilities who have been placed in institutions. Most had faced abuse. Basic due process, judicial oversight, and channels of redress are non-existent. The research focused primarily on privately run residential centers in Hargeisa. As most centers hold men, the findings largely address their situations, though women with psychosocial disabilities also suffer serious abuses.