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December 6, 2007 at 07:55:30

Headlined on 12/6/07:
The Horrific Tale of Sonkorey: the tip of the iceberg on the attrocities committed by Ethiopians in Somalia

by Ibrahim Abdulkadir     Page 1 of 1 page(s)

http://www.opednews.com

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Every story has an impact, whether socially or individually, but the story of Sonkorey Mohamed, as reported by the Irin News, has not only touched us, but prompted us to action and long term commitment in doing everything necessary to stop the illegal Ethiopian occupation in Somalia. Sonkorey Mohamed was not raped, nor tortured, but the tragedy she has faced due to the horrific internal displacement outweighs everything else as she experienced the perfect ordeal of being pregnant in the ninth month, and then delivering her first child in the open roadside who died in the process due to lack of a knowledgeable midwife to assist, thus causing her to bleed and eventually lose her ability to control urine.


Sonkorey Mohamed

That was not the end. Instead of her husband offering vital moral or otherwise support, he abandoned her because of her bleeding and the subsequence infection that presumably engulfed her. In her own words, the young 20-years old Sonkorey said, "My husband has left me because he said I smell very bad and he could not stand it. Other people don't want to be near me." This is a glimpse of the brutality of Ethiopia's 11-month occupation in Somalia. They didn't only expel people in large proportions from the densely populated Capital by artillery shelling and shoot-by-sight, but they also slaughtered innocent civilians with knives as horrific pictures of such inhumane atrocities were shown by the local independent Shabelle Media.   

The U.S. and the International Community has forsaken the Somali people in Mogadishu and elsewhere in Somalia. The International Community failed its collective moral responsibility by being complicit when the US supported warlords and used the vicious Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who ranks 17 in the list of world's worst dictators of last year as its proxy, to replace the six-months peace and order that had prevailed last year in Mogadishu, with what we have today of genocide, deliberate starvations, the arbitrary mass imprisonments of our elders and youth as terrorists for the awesome crime of speaking against the ugly truth of the occupation!   

Sonkorey is now among the one million-plus Mogadishu residents who are confined in the harshest concentration camps in the outskirts of the Capital, mainly in Afgoye, under trees as shelters, and near the area of the water-treatment reservoirs, having no access to health facility, adequate food and clean water. The international aid agencies couldn't reach to those people with any help since the so-called TFG government - which purely consist of criminal warlords and murderers that is hated by all Somalis, but supported by our beloved U.S. government and the U.N. - ordered its militias to halt the food delivery as well as the outside media exposure to the irreversible humanitarian tragedy of the population.   

So far, the scrutiny is on the war, (the so-called war on terror), and the support that the international community has bestowed upon the Ethiopian mercenaries to win over the resistance of the people, who are regarded in the circles of the U.N. and the U.S. State Department as terrorists, but to us, the Somali people, we consider them our only hope and means for survival. Our people's determination for peace and freedom was tested by the unprecedented systematic calamity against us, but with it was also tested in their values and leadership as the civilized world, by their sheer duplicity and evil policies towards the world's poorest nations.   

As an immigrant to this domestically great nation of America, in terms of its good treatment to me and others, I find very saddened by the actions of the U.S. government against my people. We, as Somali immigrants in the U.S. appreciate the assistance and the opportunity that was extended to us, but we will never appreciate the genocidal treatment of our people in Mogadishu that was carried out by the inexperienced U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Affairs, Miss Jendai Frazer. With the unjust U.S. involvement in Somalia comes with a huge loss of an already tarnished U.S. global standing that is leaning towards duplicity and recklessness.   

Instead of helping the Somali people overcome the criminal warlords that had victimized the Somali population for 16 years throughout Somalia, the U.S. policy along the AC-130 gunship is driving our people to choose death over the debilitating state of life in Mogadishu as Sonkorey cries out, "I'd rather die than live like this." I am sure the American people that I've seen are not in line with such hostile policies that deliberately destroy and shatter the lives of innocent people, like that of Sonkorey, but we want them to know that we're suffering because of their taxes that are enabling the Ethiopia's dictator and military to kill as much Somalis as possible. 

 

Ibrahim Abdulkadir is a community activist, freelancer and political commentator.

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A native Californian, Jan Baumgartner is a freelance writer currently living in Maine. Her background includes scriptwriting, comedy writing for the Northern California Emmy Awards, and travel writing for The New York Times. She has worked as a grant writer for the non-profit sector in the fields of academia, AIDS, and wildlife conservation and anti-poaching for NGO's in the U.S. and Africa. Her articles and essays have appeared in numerous online and print publications in the U.S. and internat...

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Jan BaumgartnerA native Californian, Jan Baumgartner is a freelance writer currently living in Maine. Her background includes scriptwriting, comedy writing for the Northern California Emmy Awards, and travel writing for The New York Times. She has worked as a grant writer for the non-profit sector in the fields of academia, AIDS, and wildlife conservation and anti-poaching for NGO's in the U.S. and Africa. Her articles and essays have appeared in numerous online and print publications in the U.S. and internat...

to see more of bio, click on member name

Thank you.

Alongside the U.S. government, the mainstream media is complicit in this, and other African crises, in keeping such atrocities in the shadows, seldom running honest, in-depth pieces about the scope of suffering in Somalia, or any other part of Africa.  Only on occasion are we fed half-truths, never being told the full story so not to implicate the U.S. government, who is often behind the scenes dictating how these nefarious events unfold.  I am deeply sorry for what is happening to the Somali people and your country.  Unfortunately, there are few places to go to find these stories - AllAfrica being perhaps the best "clearing house" of sorts for daily events on the continent.      

by Jan Baumgartner (47 articles, 135 quicklinks, 9 diaries, 221 comments) on Thursday, December 6, 2007 at 2:26:44 PM
 


Air Force Special Operations Command
Drew BuckAir Force Special Operations Command

This is foolish...

how do you people believe this stuff?! It's as if you just ripped it off some blog entry someone wrote. There's no actual supporting evidence to support claims in this story! Please, do some research and fact-checking before you write these kinds of thing!

by Drew Buck (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 9 comments) on Thursday, December 6, 2007 at 11:30:48 PM
 

 

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