December 20, 2016 | Daily Monitoring Report
Somali Police In Preparation To Mark 73rd Anniversary
20 December – Source: Goobjoog News – 122 Words
Preparations are in high gear as the Somali Police Force is set to mark the 73rd anniversary of its formation. The force has been busy for the last week practicing its parade to mark the colorful ceremony set for 20th December 2016. Heegan, the Somali police band is also expected to entertain guests with patriotic songs during the event.
The Somali Police Force which was once one of the most organized and strongest in the African continent before the civil war in 1990s was established in 1943 by Italy during the colonial period. The Somali Police Force and other law enforcement agencies have been non-operational during the years between the fall of Somali central government and the establishment of Somali Transitional Government.
Key Headlines
- Somali Police In Preparation To Mark 73rd Anniversary (Goobjoog News)
- Puntland Sacked Mudug Region Police Commissioner (Radio Dalsan)
- Somalia Appoints New Ambassador To Sweden (Hiiraan Online)
- Somalia’s Former Prime Minister Returns To Mogadishu (Goobjoog News)
- Waqle-Ajuran Clan Accuses South West State President Of Electoral Fraud (Shabelle News)
- Somaliland And Northern Regions Elect Seven Candidates To The House Of The People (AMISOM)
- AU Probes Death Of Six Civilians In Somalia (Xinhua)
- Six Journalists Killed In Africa In 2016 Watchdog Says (VOA)
NATIONAL MEDIA
Puntland Sacked Mudug Region Police Commissioner
20 December – Source: Radio Dalsan – 109 Words
Puntland has reportedly sacked Mudug region Police Commissioner Abdiwahid Abdulle Warsame who had been accused of poor performance in his docket. Puntland officials told reporters he had failed to bring peace in the region in his capacity as police commissioner. No further details have emerged of the firing of police commissioner.
The police commissioner is said to have played a key role in the security of Mudug and previous operations against Al-Shabaab and pro-ISIS militants. According to reports, Abdiwahid Abdulle Warsame did not take his dismissal keenly. Mr. Warsame accused members of the Puntland administration of being behind his dismissal. The Puntland administration has yet to appoint a replacement.
Somalia Appoints New Ambassador To Sweden
20 December- Source: Hiiraan Online – 97 Words
The Somali Federal Government has appointed a new ambassador to Sweden. The newly appointed Ambassador, Awaale Ali Kulane was a former representative of Somalia in the United Nations in New York. Mr Awale Kulane has also worked with the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) led by President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and the current administration.Mr. Kulane’s appointment, a seasoned diplomat was welcomed by the Somalis living in Sweden. Sweden has been a major partner in supporting development in Somalia as well as hosting a large population of Somali diaspora. Mr. Kulane is the first appointed ambassador to Sweden since the fall of the central government in 1991.
Somalia’s Former Prime Minister Returns To Mogadishu
20 December – Source: Goobjoog News – 217 Words
Former Somalia premier and presidential aspirant Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo was received by hundreds of his supporters in Aden Adde International Airport in the capital, Mogadishu. According to our correspondent at the airport, hundreds of Mogadishu residents have escorted Farmajo to his residential house. Farmajo is believed to be the most popular politician in Somalia.
Farmaajo declared his candidacy for the 2016 presidential elections in August, making this a probable second shot after losing out in the 2012 poll to the outgoing President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. Farmaajo was removed in a UN backed deal in 2011 which saw the extension of the mandates of the then president Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden and their deputies until 20 August 2012, when the new elections were to be organised.
Despite his earlier stand that only parliament had the final authority to hound him out of office, Farmajo bowed to pressure in June 19, 2011 following the Kampala Accord in which Speaker Aden had ruled Farmajo’s exit as a condition of the deal. After his departure from government in 2011, Farmaajo joined the presidential race in 2012 but got barely 12 votes out of the possible 275. Following his loss after the 2012 Presidential election, Farmajo went back to academia teaching in American universities where he is still a professor.
Waqle-Ajuran Clan Accuses South West State President Of Electoral Fraud
20 December – Source: Shabelle News – 140 Words
Scholars, intellectuals and politicians of Waqle-Ajuran tribe have accused President of South West State Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden of corrupting the clan’s Lower House seats of the Federal Parliament. Idris Osman Hajji, who was among six parliamentary candidates who ran for the Lower House seat of Waqle-Ajarun clan said their legitimate electoral delegates have been changed and replaced with fake delegates by Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden.
Speaking in an interview with Radio Shabelle, Mr Hajji said the illegal delegates elected a candidate named Hassan who got the support of South West State President Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden. He added Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden also replaced the clan chief with a chief from another clan called Jiido, who can’t represent their tribe’s determination in the election.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Somaliland And Northern Regions Elect Seven Candidates To The House Of The People
20 December- Source: AMISOM- 630 Words
Somaliland and northern regions have elected seven more candidates to the House of the People in the latest round of voting bringing the total number of representatives to 26. Six candidates were elected, yesterday, while one was elected last Wednesday. The exercise, which resumed yesterday, had been temporarily halted to allow consultations among electoral officials, delegates and candidates. Somaliland and other northern regions still have 20 more seats to fill for the House of the People and 11 for the Upper House.
Three of those elected in the peaceful exercise, Monday, are women as northern regions made efforts to fulfill the 30 percent women representation quota as required by the Federal Indirect Electoral Implementation Team (FIEIT).The six are Fadumo Ismail Hussein, Khadra Mohamed Tukale, Suriye Diriye Arab, Ismail Abdirahman Sheikh Bashir, Osman Elmi Boqorre and Abdirahman Ahmed Suge. They join Ahmed Mohamed Jama who won the only contest held last Wednesday.
Mr. Boqorre, a former MP, expressed his satisfaction with the security arrangements for the electoral process and noted that the hall, in which he was elected, was of historic significance to him.“It was in this hall that a few years ago we passed the Sharia law but came under a mortar attack, causing us to flee. Many people were injured in the stampede that ensued but today, thanks to Allah, we are having a very peaceful election with nothing to fear,” MP-elect Boqorre said in his victory remarks.
AU Probes Death Of Six Civilians In Somalia
20 December – Source: Xinhua Online – 315 Words
The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) said on Tuesday that it has launched investigations into the killing of six civilians in separate incidents in Qoryooley and Marka in southern Somalia over the weekend.
The AU said initial reports established that AMISOM troops came under mortar attack by suspected Al-Shabaab terrorists hiding in the neighborhood on Saturday night. This, AMISOM said, was after the troops on patrol noticed an unusual movement of vehicles in the night, believed to have been ferrying Al-Shabaab fighters.
“The movement of vehicles prompted AMISOM troops to set up a roadblock to thwart attacks by Al-Shabaab militants. A minibus approaching the roadblock was ordered to stop but the driver defied the order and reversed the vehicle in haste, forcing our troops to shoot, killing six people in the minibus,” the statement said.
The AU mission said there is an agreement in place between the local administration and AMISOM banning movement of vehicles in the area after 19:00hrs to minimize terrorist attacks in the night, which had become frequent, killing innocent civilians.The AU mission said the AMISOM convoy en-route to Mogadishu was ambushed by Al-Shabaab militants after it hit an improvised explosive device (IED) on the same evening near Buffow.
OPINION, ANALYSIS AND CULTURE
“In Somalia, Mohamed Ibrahim Moalimuu, a former radio journalist and secretary-general of the National Union of Somali Journalists, says killings in his country are mercifully lower than last year. But he says, that could be because so many journalists have already been killed, he ticked off at least two dozen that he could remember, and many others have fled into exile or been driven to self-censor,”
Six Journalists Killed In Africa In 2016, Watchdog Says
20 December – Source: VOA English – 675 Words
Twenty-sixteen has been a grim year for African journalism, with six journalists killed and 41 languishing in prisons across sub-Saharan Africa, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. In 2015, 14 journalists were killed, and 34 were in jail in Africa.
Worldwide, at least 48 journalists were killed this year, many of them in the conflict zones of Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and Afghanistan, 90 percent were local journalists. Worldwide there are 259 imprisoned journalists, the highest figure CPJ has documented in at least 16 years of record-keeping.In Africa, all the journalists killed were locals, and few of their killers have been arrested or prosecuted.
The deadliest African nation for journalists was Somalia, with three journalists killed in a troubled coastal nation that hasn’t had a stable central government for more than two decades, and where rival armed groups battle for influence, territory and resources.Of the 41 jailed journalists, 33 are in the neighboring countries of Ethiopia and Eritrea, two nations whose governments have been accused of becoming increasingly intolerant of the press amid growing dissatisfaction with their prolonged rule.
William Bird, director of Johannesburg-based Media Monitoring Africa, says the arrests of the half-dozen Ethiopian journalists run parallel to the rise of anti-government protests this year. Of the six journalists arrested in Ethiopia this year, five are being held without charge and all five had reported critically on the protests.“We’ve seen, certainly in 2016, significant levels of civil uprising to challenge the lack of freedom there and part of the government’s default response has been to arrest and detain journalists,” he told VOA. “So they’re clearly taking an approach that says, the best way of staying in power is to crush anyone who opposes you.”
And, he says, it works.“We’ve got journalists in jails throughout our continent, and there’s seldom a peep,” he said. “These are tactics that unfortunately on our continent tend to have a far greater and more devastating impact, partly because there are less media in those countries anyway, but also because there isn’t as much international outrage when you arrest an African journalist in an African country, than when you arrest a journalist from a major international news outlet.”
TOP TWEETS
@wakiilorg : Postponed 3 times already! Will NLF delay the presidential election once again? Will the pubic accept yet another delay? #Doorashada2016
@HassanIstiila: The Somali Police Force celebrated Its 73rd Anniversary in the Somali capital Mogadishu. our forces used to be one of the best in Africa.
@TC_Mogadishu: Meeting with the Drought Committee of Somaliland in Hargeisa to seek the ways how to alleviate the severe effects of the ongoing drought.
@abdirashidmd:After months of ravaging drought, nomads in#Somalia sigh with relief as rain begins to lash #Puntland#drought #Africa
@JamalMOsma:#Somalia saves #Uganda and #Tanzania from going to war – that was 44 years ago.http://www.monitor.co.ug/
@XHNews:The @UNICEF, partners aim to vaccinate 54,000 children under 10 in south #Somalia in mass measles vaccination drivehttp://xhne.ws/vRFVR
@hisilow:One interesting thing about Somalis, they travel with their food culture wherever they go. #Anjeera is found in every home #Somalia #Kenya
Follow the conversation →
IMAGE OF THE DAY
Somali Youth participating at a symposium organized by IFRAH Foundation in collaboration with AMISOM, Banaadir Youth Association, Somali Youth Cluster, the Ministry of Information and the Attorney General
Photo: AMISOM