The Eid day massacre in Ceerigaabo

[Knight of Wisdom]

Kuwait:{Jidbaale.com}: It was mid afternoon of Eid-al-Fitr day, November 6, 2011 when the Somaliland armed forces showered a residential area in the town of Erigavo with bullets and artillery shells of all sizes. A recent visitor to Erigavo, and specially a foreigner who is not familiar with the population distribution in the town, would visualize that the heavy artillery fire was focused on an enemy who infiltrated into town. However, this outsider would soon know that the authorities were bombarding innocent civilians whom they claim to govern. The gunners were the regular forces of the Somaliland secessionists {****} while the victims hailed from the ****** unionists of Erigavo.

 

Just a day before a man from one of the clans in town was shot dead. Hours later a family member of the deceased retaliated by killing a relative of the assassin. Things should have ended then and there as it used to be. These clans lived together in Sanag for centuries. They experienced similar or even worse incidents which were usually settled through the intervention of elders respected by both sides. The need for the intervention of real or imagined governments never arose in the past. Not this time. The so called government of Somaliland deployed all the troops it could muster, all the military vihicles it could assemble in one place and all the artillery shells it could afford for use in the section of the town inhabited by the ****** community of *********** and **********.

 

The result of this unwarranted military adventure was the massacre of civilians, mainly women, children and elderly men. Homes and business houses fell on the heads of unsuspecting residents. Scores of men and school boys were rounded up from the streets or dragged out of their homes and imprisoned. Up till today they are in detention.

 

This massacre is not a first for the clique headed by renegade Ahmed Silanyo, the so called “president” of the secessionist entity of Somaliland. Exactly to the day last year Silanyo’s forces killed and maimed civilians in Kalshale near Buhodle. Photographs of the bodies of victims run over by the separatist’s military vehicles were published in the internet and handed over to certain Human Rights organizations. However, due to the lack of action by organizations and governments who incessantly pay lib service to “human rights violations”, the Kalshale criminals repeated their atrocities in Erigavo.

The Somali people, particularly those of Sool, Sanag and Cayn {SSC} whose regions include both Erigavo and Kalshale, know that the weapons that killed, crippled and orphaned in Kalshale and Erigavo were bought with money donated to the secessionist entity in Hargeisa by western governments and organizations. The major portion of these grants came {and still do come} from the British government. This money, which is meant for developmental purposes, is diverted into military use. Hence the massacres.

 

It is time that the said governments and organizations closely scrutinized and followed up their donations to the recognition seeking entity in Hargeisa: lest their donations kill. It is time that “Human Rights” organizations did something tangible in Somalia that would make them deserve this august nomenclature. It is time that the UN Secretary General’s representative in Somalia, Augustine Mahiga acknowledged his responsibility and did something useful for a change.

 

Ahmed Tabaatiig

Chairman

SSC Community in Kuwait

E-mail: ahmedtabaatiig@yahoo.com

11/11/2011

[Somalia]

Let it go. Your land has been designated by Ethiopia to be part of Somaliland, we must respect that, do not fight, make peace with your leaders.

[Jacaylbaro]

This money, which is meant for developmental purposes, is diverted into military use. Hence the massacres.

Very ignorant ......

[Xaaji Xunjuf]

Do they even know the meaning of massacre

[Liibaan]

The Leaders of SSC Regional State of Somalia Warn The Secessionist Clan of Somalidiidland

 

 

[Liibaan]

SSC Foreign Relations Commission

__________________________________________

 

Somaliland’s Crimes in Erigavo By SSC Foreign Relations Commission

 

 

Somaliland’s revanchist crimes against the SSC people have now become part of its raison d’etre. It was Kalshaale last year when joint militias from the one-clan secessionist enclave based in Hargeisa and its affiliated clan went on the warpath in the SSC Cayn region. Territorial conquest, and notably the capture of the regional capital Buuhoodle, was their main objective. This latter day colonial-like gunboat adventure was ignominiously defeated notwithstanding the loss of many innocent SSC nomads and civilians. As if they had learned nothing from that experience, this renegade administration is at it again in their vainglorious clan hegemony. This time their target is the town of Erigivao in the north east of Somalia (Somaliland as the secessionists call it), a melting pot inhabited by four clans, two belonging to the secessionist camp and the others unionists under occupation.

 

Until the secessionists took over the area, Erigavo has distinguished itself as the one place in Somalia where all its diverse clans have lived harmoniously and settled peacefully any problem that arose without the need for external intervention. All that centuries old heritage changed with the advent of the secessionist control over the area and their misguided ideological quest for clan hegemony. Inevitably, this his has given rise to tit-for-tat killings and the current tension in the town. It is the responsibility of any authority worth its name and valuing communal peace to intervene in a timely fashion and in an even-handed approach and solve these tensions first and foremost through traditional Somali conflict resolution modalities. For Somaliland, however, generating or exploiting tensions between its supporting secessionist clans and recalcitrant unionist ones are part of its policy tools to maintain its control or expand its SSC territorial occupation. It happened in Kalshaale and it is now taking place in Erigavo.

 

The recent revenge killings in Erigavo has provided the authority the pretext to implement a wider agenda that has been in the works for sometime and entailing far reaching repercussions for the demography and balance of power among the clans in the town. In pursuance of this agenda, the authority launched on the 5th and 6th of November a coordinated attack only on the SSC section of the town deploying its heavily equipped militia and supported by armed militias from fellow clans. Disarming and “pacifying” the SSC residents in their quarter was the stated objective for this military onslaught on defenceless SSC civilians. But these SSC People who are disarmed, under siege and left defenceless in the face of the combined hostilities of an authority and its revenge and land seeking clans have now been left with two clear choices: leave the town or face the consequences. Responding to this fait accompli, SSC residents have left the town in droves to seek shelter and security in the SSC heartland. Through ethnic cleansing, the town of Erigavo, hitherto a multi clan melting pot could end up as a purified unmixed one clan territory.

 

Somaliland’s latest actions in Erigavo are also politically motivated and have to be seen against the background of the forthcoming SSC conference in Taleex, scheduled to take place in due course. Somaliland perceives this conference with deep forebodings, fearing the emergence of an SSC Regional Administration that could end its occupation of the SSC regions and in the end unravel its quest for recognition on the false claim that the whole of former British Somaliland is under its control. Somaliland therefore has an interest to create facts on the ground while it has the time and, if possible, do all it can to undo this conference.

 

Given its mindless disastrous adventure in Kalshaale in the Cayn region, Somaliland’s current actions in Erigavo in the Sanaag region has all the hallmarks of a possible repeat of that history. Already several SSC residents have been killed and scores wounded, most of them women and children. But the casualties are likely to rise as many injured victims are forced to remain indoors and denied access to medical treatment. As the pressure on them builds up and people are forced to leave the town, a stampede could easily ensue. The looming humanitarian crisis needs no amplification. On behalf of its community, the SSC External Relations Commission is calling on the UN Humanitarian organisations based in Nairobi to respond in time to the needs of the SSC community in Saanag, whether those besieged in Erigavo or those displaced in the hinterland. It also calls on the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General, H.E. Augustine Mahiga, as well as the UN Independent Expert on the Human Rights Situation in Somalia, Dr Shamsul Bari, to give the situation unfolding in Erigavo the attention and action it merits.

 

Foreign Relations Commission

SSC Regions of Somalia

[Aaliyyah]

This is heartbreaking to hear. What is more heart breaking is that dadka qaar way iska indha tirayaan..qabilestayaal. Laakin xaqdaro meel dheer ma gaadho ba lyidhi, ilaahay ayaan uga baryana dadka faraj dagdag ah oo khyr leh.

 

salaam