Statement by Hon. Drs. Fawsia Mohamed Sheikh Hassan, a Member of
Central and Executive Committees and also Secretary for Human Rights and
War Crimes of the Alliance for Re-liberation of Somali (ARS).
Madam Chairperson/Mr. Chairman,
Honorable Participants,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good morning/Afternoon,
I am pleased and feel honored to be here with you today. I have
come from a far away party of the globe in order to attend this
important meeting and would like to share with you our anxiety about the
ongoing man-made humanitarian crisis that is ravaging our country.
As you may all know, for the last more than ten months since
end of 2006 our country has been under foreign occupation after the Bush
administration sanctioned invasion by Ethiopian proxy forces. These
forces have ever since been committing war crimes tantamount to
genocide, which escalated during April 2007. They have been massacring
the civilian population, especially in the capital city, Mogadishu,
barbarically raping women, often in the presence of their children and
spouses; committing acts of sacrilege against religious sites, the
Mosques, and looting properties of the people. They target cash in any
currency, portable electronic goods such as laptops, Mobile phones,
transistor radios, etc., which ends up in black markets in Addis Ababa.
Such looting by Ethiopians soldiers is a traditional custom of
Abyssinian culture since the Menelik era. Not only were soldiers
permitted to commit acts of pillage, but also to live upon the spoils of
conquests or the resources of the people of occupied territories as is
the present case of Somalia.
Ethiopian forces have wantonly destroyed hundreds of homes
almost in every quarter of the city by indiscriminately firing at random
their artillery lethal weapons including tanks in order to inflict
collective punishment against the civilian population whenever they meet
opposition from the ‘Mujahidin’ of the national resistance. Permit me to
quote the following passage from the Report of UN appointed Monitoring
Group for the arms embargo on Somalia for June 2007 (para.30, p.12) and
was submitted to the UN Security Council on 18 July 2007: And quote: “…
antagonizing against Ethiopians is at crescendo – clearly not being
helped by the Ethiopian Army’s heavy handed response to insurgent
attacks involving the use of disproportionate force.” And furthermore,
according to that same Repot (para.117,p.29) the Ethiopian forces even
use lethal chemical weapon of a type called, white phosphorus’ and the
report showed photographic evidence of the deployment impact of the
substance and confirmed at least 35 unarmed non-combatant civilians
killed in Mogadishu.
The media has been continuously harassed since the Ethiopian
occupation in order the stifle news. Nine journalists have been killed
under circumstances leading to suspect operatives allied with Ethiopian
occupation forces. Radio Stations were specially targeted, their
equipment damaged or destroyed and their staff often arrested and
mishandled until finally three of the stations: Shabelle, Simba and
Banadir were totally shut down for more than three weeks.
The Ethiopians have been conducting widespread searches of
people’s homes for alleged security reasons, but primarily motivated by
plunders. Prominent people are constantly detained for ransom. On
Saturday, July 28 2007, BBC News released interviews with people who had
been detained and later ransomed at $500 per head. One of the
interviewees described their ordeal as that of being in a human market.
He added that out of about seventy people who were arrested from inside
Mosque, twenty –three of them could not ransom themselves for lack of
resources and remained in detention who were later accused of trumped up
charges.
The following were the latest development of major events in
Mogadishu:
On 8th November 2007, Ethiopian forces in large numbers with
their heavy weapon and other armor entered several quarters of the
Mogadishu city. In some quarters, they met fierce resistance and
nineteen (19) people were killed including nine (9) Ethiopian soldiers,
but the majority of them were non-combatant unarmed civilians as well as
some ‘freedom fighters of the national resistance. In the other quarters
twenty-nine (29) dead bodies of civilian were later retrieved from
houses, which the Ethiopians had entered into. Four other bodies of two
small children and their two mothers were recovered from inside a Mosque
where they had taken refuge, but were pursued by Ethiopian soldiers who
killed them there. One of the two women was pregnant.
In the following morning, on 9th November at about 9a.m.
without any further confrontation with the ‘freedom fighters the
Ethiopians indiscriminately fired their lather artillery weapons
including tanks from their occupied camps and at random directed toward
some quarters in the capital city that continued for about six hours
until 3 p.m. in the afternoon. According to BBC News over seventy people
were reported killed and 185 others wounded. Over seventy of the wounded
were admitted into the Dayniile hospital where French doctors ‘without
Frontier’ work and assist the local hospital staff.
On November 10th for the third consecutive day the Ethiopians
resumed their indiscriminate bombardments of the city. Among common
places hit was the mother and child hospital, SOS, wounding three
people. Many dead bodies were later recovered from abandoned areas
including some more of the previous two days bombardments. The BBC News
reported the death toll reaching one hundred for the three days of the
Ethiopian bombardments offensive. A fact finding international committee
have prior to those three days offensive estimated the death toll at
8,000 since the beginning of the Ethiopian invasion-cum occupation.
A new displacement of further 170, 000 have been reported by
Humanitarian Organization for those three-day offensives, in addition to
the 750,000 that had already been registered by UN Humanitarian Office
for Somalia, making the minimum internally displaced persons (IDP)
920,000 up to the November 10th, 2007, exclusive of the non-registered
and others who sought refuge elsewhere.
Thousands of people have been rounded up and detained without
any charges brought against them, many of them for the last ten months
and only few were ever released. The detainees are constantly tortured
and a good number of them are assumed dead. The chairman of the Somali
elders in Mogadishu, Mr. Ahmed Diriye Ali for his outspoken critique, he
was arrested and detained since 9 November 2007 along with others. While
elderly women renowned for her courage throughout during the civil war
even against the former warlords and thus nick-named ‘Madina General’
was deliberately shot by Ethiopian allied operatives and killed a few
days ago while she was feeding displaced persons.
While the mayhem inflicted by those proxy forces has now become
an acknowledged reality worldwide, nonetheless, some quarters still
argue for a security vacuum if those forces of Ethiopian marauders were
to leave Somalia, while the very opposite is the truth. First, those
forces did not come for peace-keeping, but for a war of aggressive
invasion and pillage of a country where peace and tranquility had
prevailed. Secondly, they turned the country into a wreckage of ruins,
mass graves and chaos by massacring its people, forcing the survivors
into becoming displaced destitute after destroying their homes and
looting their properties and possessions. Thirdly, neither the Ethiopian
invasion nor their continued occupation was legally authorized by the
United Nations. On the contrary, both these two acts are direct
violations by the United States of UN Security Council resolution 1725
that prohibits forces of neighboring countries from entering and
operating inside Somalia. The Bush Administration sanctioned Ethiopian
forces of invasion to enter and occupy Somalia. Paradoxically, that
resolution was sponsored by its lone violator, the United States of
America! And fourthly, the mere continued presence of these proxy forces
of marauders is itself a serious insecurity, rather than their leaving
the country becoming a security vacuum.
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Somali Version: HALKAN KA AKHRI
Daabaco
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