Police Defy Somaliland President’s Tolerance Call of Police Restraint

On Tuesday 26th Feb, at the concluding session of the ruling party’s central council convention in Borama, His Excellency the President of the Republic of Somaliland promised tolerance to criticism and to freedom of speech.

“We bow to the independence of the Somaliland justice system, We accept that we, the ruling party and the government, should be more tolerant to criticism and to freedom of expression,” he said.

The president particularly underlined that if in the past his government was rapped on the knuckles for being too quick to take offense on the slightest criticism of its actions – or absence of actions, in some cases as in development, this will no longer be the case.

“I so so sincerely congratu late the court that has acquitted a young man who chastised the government and its law enforcement bodies for heavyhanded treatment of inmates at police stations and the public, in general, in poems” President Bihi stated. “By acquitting this young man, the court tells us that there was nothing critical or harmful to the state in the man’s words”.

The president promised tolerance calling on law enforcement bodies to practice restraint.

The President, of course, was referring to Abdirahman Mohamed Abees, who, on January 12, the police put behind bars for publicly dressing down the police for inhumanely treating people in its custody. Abees, a dual, Somaliland-Brtish nationalities holder,  was let go on Tuesday for insufficient evidence to the prosecution’s charges.

Seemingly defying the President’s undertaking, elements of the capital’s police force, yesterday, harshly beat two journalists working for an independent, Somaliland-owned television station – the Horn Cable TV, briefly throwing them behind bars.

The police, according to the Somaliland Journalist’s Association (SOLJA), brutally manhandled newscaster and reporter, Sagal Beeldeeq, and cameraman, Ridwan Yussuf, inflicting bruises on the female reporter who was, at the time, conducting vox pops on the street. The police, also, it is reported damaged the equipment the reports were using roughly dragging them to the nearest police station at the city center. Sagal was later treated for injuries sustained during the one-sided scuffle the police created.

On Monday, earlier during the week, police officers similarly roughed up and damaged the equipment which two reporters of Bariga Africa Television station was using. Reporter Hamza Hersi Hayd and cameraman Sayid Farah Burale were filming a program at regional court where the case of the young poet, Abees was being heard, when they were set on by the officers.

On the same day, February 25, reporter mukhtar Nouh of Eryal TV, was apprehended and has not yet been charged.

Altogether, some eight involving police-media differences and collaring has been noted during the past eight weeks.

A Court in Hargeisa suspended Foore, one of the more articulate newspapers published in the city, and fined it SlShs3 million (equivalent to around 300USD), earlier in the month for publishing what the prosecution termed as ‘false’, faked news items.

The government of President is criticized for introducing a bullish kind of heavy-handedness that broaches no tolerance to the least challenging or even rise of tone to his government, actions or personal mannerisms which preceding governments – on the most part – did not make much of.