Two radio stations in Mogadishu were taken off air on Sunday and their equipment confiscated by rebels. HornAfrik Radio and Global Broadcasting Corporation were separately raided by fighters from the Al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam respectively.
HornAfrik staff said armed militia from the Al-Shabaab broke into the premises of the radio station in Bakaro market of Mogadishu on Saturday evening, chased away journalists working in the station before destroyin
g cassettes and CDs in the studios and its sister broadcasting house, Capital Voice.
In another incident, heavily armed militia from the Hizbul Islam the same afternoon broke into the headquarters of GBC radio and television in Heliwa district and took it over.
“Taking over the ownership and control of independent radio stations by force and putting the owners and the journalists in a state of panic, risk and fear is a criminal act that cannot be condoned by anybody. This is unacceptable and amounts to the highest degree of media freedom violation,” said Omar Faruk Osman, National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) secretary-general. “After killing could silence journalists and private could not cease operations, this is the desperate and dangerous act to silence private media by militants.”
On August 23, the Al-Shabaab took over another radio station, Radio Holy Quran (IQK), a privately-owned broadcasting station based in north Mogadishu, after delivering a letter in which they explained their action to the management of the media house.
HornAfrik, launched in the late 1990s, was the first independent broadcaster in Mogadishu. Both a radio and television station, HornAfrik is located in an area controlled by Al-Shabaab. The outfit is allied with the Al-Qaeda which in turn controls much of southern Somalia and parts of Mogadishu. The Al-Shabaab follows the strict Saudi Arabian-inspired Wahabi interpretation of Islam, rather than the Sufi Islam of most Somalis.
Somalia is one of the most dangerous places for journalists in the world. It was second behind Iraq in the Committee to Protect Journalist's (CPJ) impunity index this year ― a ranking of nations where reporters are killed on a recurring basis and the perpetrators rarely prosecuted. Nine journalists were killed last year in Somalia. Two have died so far this year, while many others have been threatened.
Somalia has not had a stable government since 1991. A number of Islamist militant groups are fighting the transitional West-backed government of Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and the African Union peacekeeping forces.
