NAIROBI (AFP) — Mogadishu's mayor has barred besieged Somali media from covering insurgents, military operations and the city's fleeing civilians in the face of a deadly insurgency, a rights group said Tuesday.
The order by Mohamed Omar Habeb, an ex-warlord, but now mayor, effectively chokes the flow of information from Mogadishu, where reporters and media are targeted by both joint Ethiopia-Somali forces and insurgents who have been battling since January.
At least eight journalists have been killed and dozens others either detained, ambushed or robbed, ranking Somalia the second-deadliest country worldwide after Iraq for journalists, according to press groups.
Under the order, "the media cannot report on military operations involving the transitional government forces and Ethiopian troops unless they receive written documents that gives them approval," according to a statement released by Somali Human Rights Defenders Network (SOHRIDEN).
"Interviewing government opponents inside (Somalia or) abroad is forbidden and any journalist who dispenses or any radio station that transmits their views ... will be considered as criminal."
"Disseminating (reports) on the displacement of the civilians unless the journalists receive real statistics to base as evidence for their information is also prohibited," said the order, cited by the rights watchdog.
The watchdog labelled the order as "intolerable."
With foreign reporters already avoiding Mogadishu due to insecurity, the mayor's order is the latest in a string of restrictions piling pressure on a tiny league of Somali journalists working under near-impossible climate.
Mid-November, the Somali military ordered three Mogadishu radio stations off the air, leaving the remaining six radio channels and one TV station no choice but to halt operations.
Somali authorities have accused the media of fanning the endless Mogadishu conflict, notably by interviewing anti-government elements, broadcasting propaganda and involving themselves in the insurgency.
They have also defied calls by rights groups and foreign nations to relax a heavy-handed clampdown on press freedom.
Ethiopia, which deployed troops that helped defeat an Islamist movement in Somalia in January, has also accused the Somali media of disseminating propaganda.
Since the defeat of the Islamists early this year, an ensuing guerilla campaign has displaced at least 600,000 people from Mogadishu, including 200,000 who have fled in recent weeks amid some of the heaviest fighting.
This brought to a million the amount of people displaced in the Horn of Africa nation, most of whom are living in squalid conditions, spawning Africa's worst humanitarian crisis, according to the UN.
In Addis Ababa, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said his forces were bogged down in the edgy city, where they are staging near-daily attacks and enduring counter-attacks, but unable to end the insurgency.
"Our forces went there on a mission. The question should not be about when they will leave, but about the completion of the mission," Meles said. Addis Ababa said the Islamists militants were linked to Al-Qaeda netword.
Meles said the path to "achieving stability in Somalia," had been slowed by long-running clan feuds and the failure to deployed African peacekeepers to bolster 1,500 troops from Somalia, to eventually reach the pledged 8,000 soldiers on the ground.
"(This) forced us to stay longer as expected. This was aggravated by the unexpected regrouping of insurgents, but all this hasn't affected our development efforts," he added.
Most recently, rebels have killed and dragged Ethiopian troops through Mogadishu streets, a grisly reminders of the fate the befell US special forces in 1993 in the same city. A UN peacekeeping missing pulled out of the country two years later.
Bloody clan conflict and power struggles that intensified after the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre have scuppered many bids to stabilise Somalia.
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