Filed under: Africa | Tags: Al Hidya Mosque, Amnesty International, Ethiopia, Mogadishu, Somalia
Amnesty International has responded to the Ethiopian government’s claim that its soldiers did not massacre 21 Somalis inside a mosque (here). Please also check the Al-Jazeera video at the end.
Amnesty International refutes statements made by the Ethiopian government on its report about a raid on the Al Hidya Mosque in Mogadishu on 19 April 2008. In the attack, Ethiopian forces killed at least 21 people, including 11 unarmed civilians inside the mosque, and detained at least 40 children and youths, aged 9 to 18. At least 10 others were killed by Ethiopian forces in the vicinity of the mosque.
Reports released by the organization are based on several cross-checked, independent sources such as family members of victims, testimonies gathered at the location, including individuals present in the mosque while the killings took place, and local Amnesty International contacts.
Filed under: Africa, War on Terror | Tags: Amnesty International, Ethiopia, Humans Rights, Meles Zenawi, Mogadishu, Somalia
An excellent news piece from Australia’s Herald Sun describing the recent massacre of 21 people by Ethiopian troops. What do you call this if not terrorism? The U.S. media has remained hush about this. As Chris Floyd points out, both The New York Times and the Washington Post ran the same Reuters story which was more about Ethiopia’s denial of the killings than about the actual killings. Floyd writes: ‘Except for a two-sentence summary of Amnesty’s charges, the entire top half of the story dealt with statements from minions of the Ethiopian dictator, denouncing Amnesty’s “lies.”‘ Imagine if this occurred in Venezuela. Every newspaper in the U.S. would publish the story and every Representative and Senator would be enraged, calling for President Chavez to resign. The American people would cheer on! Yeah, we are against the violation of human rights, they would say.
Of course, not the human rights of Somalis. That is a whole different matter…
AMNESTY International has accused Ethiopian soldiers of killing 21 people, including an imam and several Islamic scholars, at a Mogadishu mosque and says seven of the victims had their throats slit.
The rights group said the soldiers had also captured dozens of children during the raid on the al Hidaaya mosque in the north of the Somali capital earlier this week during operations against Islamist insurgents.
Ethiopia has thousands of soldiers in neighbouring Somalia to bolster a Western-backed government against rebels fighting an Iraq-style insurgency in the Horn of Africa nation.
The Ethiopian and Somali governments have not responded publicly to accusations of atrocities at the mosque. But they have frequently denied abusing human rights in the fight against groups they call al-Qaeda-backed terrorists.
Amnesty said those killed at the mosque included imam Sheikh Saiid Yaha and several scholars of the moderate Tabligh group that operated there.
“Eye-witnesses report that those killed inside the mosque were unarmed civilians taking no active part in hostilities,” Amnesty said.
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