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Somalia: That Question Again, Terrorists Or Freedom Fighters?
Charges against three Somalis in Oslo of providing "support to terrorism" have outraged many Somalis in Norway. The charges are that the Somalis may have sent money to rebels in Somalia, but their defenders say they were supporting freedom fighters. On Feb. 28 police in Norwegian capital Oslo arrested three Somalis, and are still detaining one of them. The Somalis, the security services say, have been sending money to terrorists in Somalia fighting the UN-supported transitional federal government.This has not gone down well with a large section of the 18,000-strong Somali population in Norway, many of whom strongly oppose the transitional government and its Ethiopian protectors. Some say the accusations fit a pattern of prejudice against Norwegian Somalis by the media or security services. "I have my doubts regarding these accusations," Hamsa Mohamed, a Norwegian Somali politician told IPS. "Similar accusations were levelled against Somalis here in 2001, but were found to be false after four years of investigations. I would have thought that the authorities had learned from that experience so that the Somali community could be spared a repeat." According to senior researcher Stig Jarle Hansen at the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research (NIBR), Norwegian Somalis are "a group that has received a lot of unfair criticism previously. What we need from the media is an increased focus on the positive things that Somalis contribute, rather than punishing whole groups because of the actions of three persons who haven't been convicted yet," he told IPS. Posted by: Fred 2008-03-16 |
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