Saturday July 13, 2024
"When you go to work you feel like you're going to war without weapons."
Between the attacks of Al Shabaab and the restrictions of the political police, being a journalist in Somalia "is a titanic undertaking," says Liban, Abdi Warsame, a 28-year-old Somali journalist who was a guest at a meeting at the National Federation of the Italian Press (Fnsi) in Rome.
“When you go to work you feel like you're going to war without weapons,” says Liban, recently seized by the Somali political police together with a colleague - present at the Roman meeting - for a service he was carrying out at the Bakaaraha market in Mogadishu, the largest city in the country, and I am aware of the illicit activities that are carried out there.
Liban says that, while he and his colleague were carrying out interviews at the market, a group of men in civilian clothes blocked them, initially seizing the equipment, then taking them away by force. This was followed by interrogations, a beating, and five hours of waiting without any information or assistance. It is not the first time that the journalist has undergone similar treatment: in the past, he had been hospitalized for three months in similar conditions, in episodes which recently convinced him to resign from his station due to the lack of solidarity from its general director, former senator under the previous president Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, known as “Farmajo.”
“Being a journalist in Somalia is tiring, a titanic thing,” says Liban, who nevertheless invites his Italian colleagues “not to get tired of talking about” these problems. “It is the only way to oppose Al Shabaab, their obscurantist logic,” he claims. Liban admits the difficulties of dealing with a jihadist network on a daily basis “which also has its infiltrations in the government” and in the security ranks, and in an interview with “Agenzia Nova” the professional claims that press freedom has worsened under the government of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud compared to his predecessor Farmajo.
“There were many arrests and gagging of journalists, already during his first term (2012-2017)," observes Liban, who attributes to the president in office an approach strongly linked to the territory and unaccustomed to a "Western" logic of press freedom. “Farmajo, for example, was trained in the United States and from this point of view he showed greater tolerance,” he said. However, Mohamud must be recognized for his effort in launching a powerful army counter-offensive against Al Shabaab, managing to conquer important districts at a national level last year. In 2024, Liban specifies, the president has focused a lot of his attention on the reform of the Constitution he proposed, a project that has fueled the debate with the Somali regional states and which has also led to a slowdown of the offensive.
At the meeting, hosted in the Roman headquarters of Fnsi and moderated by Shukri Said (Migrare association), speakers were Maurizio Calò, president of the Migrare association; Paolo Lambruschi, Avvenire journalist expert on Africa; Vincenzo Varagona, national president of Ucsi; and Maurizio Di Schino, member of the Fnsi executive board.