| Front Page |
By: A Mohamed Ali Hashi ‘Dhimbiil’
Many Somali Landers have written and debated with you on the internet and most recently on the BBC program where Muj.Silanyo, Chairman of the leading opposition party in Somaliland as well as Dr. Ibrahim laid out the case for Somaliland. I feel your characterization of Somali Landers as a people who do not want to debate is misleading and unfair. Somali Landers by nature love to debate, they believe in their cause and that is why Somaliland is by far a pathfinder with regards to democracy and the rule of law in a neighbourhood characterized by guns, violence and warlords.
As well, your suggestion that you were drowned out of the meeting in London is actually quite normal, decisive historical questions are being drawn up and answered by stakeholders on the Somali question, that the drowning out of your views does not augur well for ‘dissent’ in the political economy of Somaliland, with regards to those entrusted through the recent elections in Somaliland to govern stuns the imagination. Any “national” debate drowns out the ‘other’ and this is simple and normal passionate politics. If the state of Somaliland emasculates your rights to dissent in Gabiley, that then is another matter and the constitution of Somaliland allows for the rights of assembly, free speech and critically the rights of habeas corpus are enshrined deeply in this document. Somaliland welcomes you to debate the issues in Gabiley or elsewhere. The suggestion that ‘your dissent” may be met with violence or intimidation is a red herring! Somaliland is one of most progressive countries in the Horn and the record bails me out. I challenge you to go to Somaliland and see whether your rights to free speech will be emasculated. The people of Gabiley nevertheless, are chagrined that you have yet to show them a modicum of respect and acceptance that they have shown to you all your life. But that is to anticipate.
As well, your characterization of the visit by President Rayale to Great Britain as ‘uncle tommish’ is rather amateurish, simply because everyone living on this side of the Atlantic understands the politics and discourse of the ‘race card’, particularly when the audience is European, to use this common code words and language of guilt in order to score ‘Afro centric’ points in the public media is, to make an understatement, disingenuous. The dictatorship used this same slur against the people of Somaliland – that they were pro-British and not sufficiently anti-colonial – which in essence is code word for characterizing the people of Somaliland as traitors, when they are not. The dictator was famous for calling the people of Somaliland “my Jews” leaving the impression that his fascist government had well thought out program to exterminate Somali citizens: something that nearly happened had not the people of Somaliland risen and defeated the dictatorship.
Home | Contact us | Links | Archives