Genocide in Somalia’s Buhoodle District
of Somalia’s Northern Cayn Region
The Puntland Diasporas Forum, (PDF), an independent Somali civic society organization that advocates for justice and human rights in Somalia, condemns in the strongest terms the recent unprovoked armed attack on the hither to peaceful northern regions of Cayn by the one-clan Hargeisa-based secessionist administration of “Somaliland”.
The PDF expresses shock and outrage that the Somaliland militia, a remnant of the notorious civil war SNM Militia, would deploy tanks and use artillery shells against nomadic communities in Cayn Region, and in the process commit atrocities and crimes bordering on Crimes against Humanity. According to reports coming from that region, the SNM sudden invasion resulted in the massacre, displacement, and injuries of hundreds of Nomad civilians; extensive damage to local wells and pastoral grazing areas, which are essential for their livestock.
In particular, we condemn in the strongest terms the latest onslaught on dawn hours of Sunday February 20, 2011, where innocent civilians in Kalshaale and Goralugad villages in the Buhoodle District were bombarded with tank shells, their livestock killed, and young men kidnapped to be tortured and imprisoned in Burco, capital of Somaliland’s Togdheer region.
The accountability for these crimes lies on the door steps of Warlord Mohamed Ahmed Siilaanyo, the newly elected (by his own clan) as President of Somaliland secessionist enclave. He is the founder of the murderous civil-war 1980s Somali National Movement (SNM) militia, which at the time rained havoc on Sool, Sanaag, and Cayn region. There is nothing ‘National’ about it. It is a one-clan, chauvinistic movement. Four of the five clans inhabiting Northern Somalia are opposed to the balkanization of the country while ‘Somaliland’, a one-clan project, is trying to shove the secession project down the throat of the other four clans.
Also the unwitting accomplice of these crimes are some foreign governments and international organization that provide funding aimed at development and institutional building to ‘Somaliland’ but instead is used by the one-clan secessionist entity to buy weapons to invade other clans’ territory, thus causing further pain and suffering to these innocent nomads who were struggling when attacked to survive a severe draught. PDF wishes to single out the UN and International Agencies with branches in Hargeisa as well as the UK, US, and EU who extend to Somaliland more than half of the assistance earmarked for Somalia.
We call upon the United Nations’ Human Rights Council, The African Union’s Human Rights Commission, non-Governmental Human Rights organizations and the rest of the international community to condemn and respond promptly to human rights violations in Somalia’s northern region of Cayn.
We also urge the Security Council members to investigate the indiscriminate killing of civilian committed by SNM aka Somaliland, and put pressure on ‘Somaliland’, which very existence depends on the generosity of the international community, to put an end the genocide going on in the Buhoodle District of Cayn Region..