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JUSTICE SHOULD NOT BE SELECTIVE! By Ahmed Keyse Ali Feb. 28, 2005 While it is important to bring to book all those who had a role in the human rights violations against our people, it is equally important to avoid making justice a selective one. The well argued editorial published in Alternative view and posted on several websites regarding General Mohamed Ali Samatar's alleged involvement in past atrocities in our land raise some basic questions about our notions of justice, notions that have grown out of misconception about justice. The fact that some of the people who had visible roles in human rights abuses in Somalia still remain al large is due, in part, to our insistence that only non Somaliland people deserve to pay price for what they have done! It was 1990s when many members of the military government were unjustly evicted from North American cities on the basis of their past involvement in the military dictatorship. We made a deliberate decision to turn a blind eye and let so many people with a direct role in human rights violations against our people off the hook simply because they belong to our clans and sub clans! Can we go lower levelin dishonouring thousands of our people, children women, elderly, innocent men and women, who were at the receiving end of a brutal dictatorship's campaign to subjugate our people? General Mohamed Ali Samatar was a member of the Supreme Revolutionary Council that assumed power in a bloodless coup in 1969. He was a big shot right at the end of the military regime in Somalia, so was Ahmed Mohamed Adan Qeybe, the current speaker of Somaliland Parliament and others in the Somaliland Government. In 1990 in an interview with Yusuf Hassan, former head of Africa Features of the BBC World Service and broadcaster with the BBC Somali service before he left to work with UNHCR, Mr Qeybe, who was then a foreign minister for the Somali government of 1990, refuted human rights violations against our people! The position he has now in Somaliland clearly demonstrates our belief in selective justice, the very justice outlook the toppled dictatorial regime adopted to alienate people who abhor dictatorship. In the 1990s Somaliland was on upper moral ground, a situation that was exploited by believers in selective justice to discredit Somaliland. How can we expect a legal system to bring to book someone who, in cahoots with many Somalilanders, committed crimes against humanity, when I don't want anyone to fingerpoint my our compatriots who had a role in the crimes? “This was a crime of such severity and proportion that it qualifies as a crime against humanity, and to defend the leadership who issued such orders is truly appalling and shameful beyond shame. One would hope there is a limit to how low the Somali sense of justice will sink before one can tell the tree from the forest ,” editorialised Alternative View (www.alternativeview.net). Who does the editorial writer has in mind when he/she berates some people for misconceiving the role of justice? It is said that our enlightened people continue to practice a double standard approach to justice whenever the case may bring to light violations committed by Somalilanders who were members in the dictatorial regime. People will rally around anyone who is picked upon simply he belongs to minority clan or he is defenseless. It is the selectiveness in our thinking that makes issues about human rights violations against people a tricky one for it is pursued by people who regard crimes by our clansmen as forgivable! Omar Arteh Qalib is believed to have condoned the human rights violations against many people in Mogadishu when the United Somali Congress made him a prime minister in 1991. The fact that he never spoke up against human rights wrongs made by USC forces renders the statesman perception a laughable one. So many examples of this nature are abound. In the eyes of many Somalianders he is a statesman! Some Somaliland politicians have used hate language that led to brutalities against innocent people. Is there a way to deal with people whose actions, words or visible roles led to human rights violations against our people without injecting an element of tribal thinking into our reasoning? Is it fair to talk about injustice by some people while ignoring injustice by people in our midst? We need to avoid tunnel vision when dealing with human rights crimes committed during the military dictatorship in Somalia. Ahmed Keyse Ali, London
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