Somali journalists banned from covering insurgents

NAIROBI - The mayor of Mogadishu has banned Somali media from publishing interviews with insurgents or reporting on military operations and the city's refugee exodus, journalists and watchdogs said on Tuesday.

The measures announced by mayor and former warlord Mohamed Dheere put further pressure on journalists reeling from a string of assassinations, shutdowns, arrests, and threats from both sides during this year's Islamist-led insurgency in Somalia.

With most foreign journalists staying clear of the Horn of Africa nation for security reasons, local reporters take huge risks to cover the daily violence, mainly in Mogadishu.

Seven local reporters have died this year, most shot dead in targeted killings yet to be investigated.

Media heads, whom Dheere called in on Monday and Tuesday, said they were told they could only operate if they did not report on the exodus of people from Mogadishu. The United Nations says 600,000 have left Somalia's capital this year -- or more than half its population.

They were also told that interviews with insurgents and prominent anti-government figures, like exiled Islamists in Eritrea, would not be allowed, nor would reports on government operations against the rebels.

"We, as the radio directors, decided to think about the conditions. When we meet again with the mayor tomorrow, we will present what is reasonable or not reasonable to us," Radio Simba director Abdulahi Ali Farah said.

The government accuses Somali journalists of fanning the insurgency by giving airtime to leaders and exaggerating their attacks. But Islamists have also criticised the media for being too close to the government.

"We have been threatened and our radios have been shut down at gunpoint, so we still demand to be allowed to resume our broadcasting without conditions," said Banadir radio deputy director Ali Muhamed Aden.

Banadir, Simba and Shabelle radios have all been ordered off air recently, Shabelle for the eighth time this year.

Former Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi's administration gave Dheere, the influential former warlord of Middle Shabelle region, a free hand to tame Mogadishu and backed his closures of media outlets -- which they had meted out repeatedly.

It was not immediately clear whether newly appointed Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein, a career Somali public servant and police officer, supported the latest moves against media.

Neither Dheere, nor government officials, could be reached on Tuesday for comment.

The Somali Human Rights Defenders Network said the "oppressive" and "intolerable" new media directives contravened the statutes under which Somalia's transitional federal government was established in 2004.

"Somali journalists have had their bitter share of human rights violations in their home country with numerous arrests, detention, killing and threats that forced a huge number of journalists to flee to Nairobi," it said in a statement.

"Any attempt to silence the media risks denying the public their rights to information which is not only a provision of the transitional federal charter but also several international instruments to which Somalia is signatory."

Meanwhile, six people were killed in Mataban district, 420 km (260 miles) north of Mogadishu, when Ethiopian troops opened fire after an ambush by suspected insurgents, officials said.