Following the news that a journalist was jailed for six years for broadcasting an interview with a Islamist rebel chief, the authorities in the semi-autonomous state of Puntland have officially banned all journalists from interviewing rebels in the area.
The deputy director of a radio station in the semi-autonomous state of Puntland in north east Somalia has been sentenced to six years in prison following a court case from which the media were banned. Abdifatah Jama Mire was given the sentence after the radio station Horseed Media FM broadcast an interview in which he interviewed Mohamed Said Attom, an Islamist rebel chief who has been linked to Al-Qaeda. Seven journalists from the station were initially arrested but so far only Mire has been charged. All media reporters were banned from the trial, which ended in minutes.
Somali Islamists Hizbul-Islam have decided to add watching the World Cup to their now very-very long list of things that are Haraam.
Several houses where games have been shown have been attacked, and the BBC reports that two people were killed on Saturday night, which certainly puts Robert Green’s problems in perspective.
Hizbul Islam spokesman Sheikh Mohamed Abdi Aros said:
“We are warning all the youth of Somalia not to dare watch these World Cup matches. It is a waste of money and time and they will not benefit anything or get any experience by watching mad men jumping up and down.”
The sheikh’s views on the Vuvuzela are unknown.
We call on the local radio stations to stop broadcasting the songs and all music. We give them a 10-day deadline and any radio station found not complying with the orders… will face sharia action. Moalim Hashi Mohamed Farah, a senior Hizb al-Islam official, 3 April
Hizb al-Islam is one of Somalia’s two main insurgent forces. The Islamic rebels control large swathes of the war-torn Somalia, imposing strict Islamic law in those regions. Ten days after the ultimatum was pronounced, 14 of Mogadishu’s FM broadcaster fell dramatically silent. From 13 April onwards those hoping to hear music had only two options, Radio Bar-Kulan, a UN-funded channel broadcast from Kenya and the government-run Radio Mogadishu.
Music might be “unislamic” to the Islamic militias, but residents say music “is the only break from the shelling, the gunfire and the general insecurity”. Even before the latest ban, music was outlawed along with football, movies, beauty salons and bras, in other suburban Somali areas subject to Islamist control men have been forced to grow beards. Proscribing every single tune is a visible sign of a minority group’s ability to instil a real terror in the populace.
“Journalists working in the radio stations have in the past witnessed broad daylight assassination of their colleagues and have now been signaled that they would follow the same fate if they do not obey these oppressive orders,” said Omar Faruk Osman, secretary general of the National Union of Somali Journalists. Unsurprising then, that those who want to survive comply with the militia’s orders.
The Hizb al-Islam’s order echoes the Talibans’ strict rules imposed on the Afghani population, first, and later on parts of the Pakistani population. In 2009, John Bailey, a renowned British ethnomusicologist, was asked by Radio Liberty correspondent Abubakar Siddique to give his opinion about the Talibans’ music ban:
You know, the Taliban like to invoke the hadith, that, you know, the person who listens to music will, on the day of judgment, have molten lead poured into their ears and you can read the rest of it for yourself …The Taliban were not against all forms of music, and they certainly permitted religious singing without musical instruments. This isn’t just the banning of music but it is a competition between different kinds of music.”
In an interview with a UN news service, Ali Sheikh Yassin, the deputy chairman of the Mogadishu-based Elman Human Rights Organidation said “We are talking about music as a sin against Islam, yet the biggest sin of all, killing humans, is being committed every hour of every day. What is more anti-Islam than killing innocent people?”
On 20 April, the situation for station workers worsened. The Somali Transitional Federal Government warned all the radio stations that heeded the Islamists’ ban they will be punished with a shutdown.Somali journalists can’t believe at what they are hearing. “Each group are issuing orders against us and we are the sole victims,” Abukar Hassan Kadaf, the director of Somaliweyn radio told the New York Times.
Update: Keeping its word, the government had closed Tusmo Radio and Somaliweyn. But it has now decided to repeal its order. According to Somalia’s Information Minister, Dahir Mohamud Gelle, “The Somali government is not happy with the oppression of the media and will always work toward creating an enabling environment where it can operate freely.”