MOGADISHU – Abukar Hassan Mohamoud, the manager of Mogadishu-based radio Somaliweyn, was shot dead on Wednesday outside his home in the capital’s Aargada district by men armed with pistols.
Press freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders reports that condemned his cold-blooded murder, which joins a long list of crimes of violence against journalists in Somalia, and reiterates its call to the international community to do everything possible to ensure that these killings do not go unpunished.
“This murder is the latest example of the extraordinary violence to which journalists are exposed in Somalia. Indifference to the fate of Somali journalists must stop. We reiterate our call for an independent international commission of enquiry into crimes against journalists in this country,” it said.
Nicknamed Kadaf, Mohamoud was a long-standing member of the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ), a Reporters Without Borders partner organization. He had participated in all the NUSOJ campaigns calling for journalists to be protected against harassment and physical attack and he courageously never hesitated to lend his name to statements condemning each of the murders of his colleagues. Aged 43, he had a wife and two daughters.
He was the second journalist to be murdered this year, following Shabelle Media Network director Hassan Osman Abdi, who was shot dead outside his Mogadishu home by five unidentified gunmen on 28 January. Somalia has for years been the deadliest country in Africa for journalists.
According to the monitoring of Reporters Without Borders and NUSOJ, four journalists were killed in 2011, three were killed in 2010 and nine were killed in 2009. Just a week ago, Reporters Without Borders wrote to the participants in the London conference on Somalia to remind them about violence against journalists and request the creation of an independent international commission of enquiry into all the abuses against media personnel in Somalia.
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