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The killing of a young reporter – the sixth journalist to be killed in Somalia this year – has prompted “shock and outrage” from union and media colleagues.
Ahmed Addow Anshur (right), 25, was murdered on Thursday, 24 May 2012, the National Union of Somali Journalists reports. He was shot four times in the head and chest by four men armed with pistols.
“We strongly condemn this indescribable murder of Ahmed Addow Anshur whose work as a journalist over the years has been lauded for his high professional quality and integrity,” said Burhaan Daahir, president of the union’s Supreme Council. “It is obvious that he was murdered in the exercise of his professional work as a journalist so that he does not expose uncomfortable truth.”
The presenter of Radio Shabelle’s popular evening radio program Qubanaha Wararka (News Content), Anshur had been investigating and reporting on corruption cases with Hassan Osman Abdi, the director of Radio Shabelle, who was killed in January.
“In April, he told me, after finishing an interview on the investigations of murder of Hassan, that he is afraid to leave the premises of Shabelle because he fears for his life,” confirmed Osman.
NUSOJ calls on Transitional Federal Government and the African Union Peacekeeping troops in Mogadishu to act firmly and urgently to dispel the climate of impunity for attacks on journalists” added Osman.
Anshur, a member of NUSOJ’s Banadir branch, is the third Radio Shabelle journalist murdered in this year.
He leaves a pregnant wife.
Radio journalist Farhan Jeemis Abdulle (left), was shot and killed by masked gunmen in Somalia’s northern town of Galkayo earlier this month on the eve of World Press Freedom Day, an annual event to highlight threats to media, journalists and freedom of expression.
For further information, contact:
National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ)
Taleex Street, KM4 Area, Hodan District,
Mogadishu, Somalia, tel/fax: +252 61 5889931
e-mail: newsletter@nusoj.org
NUSOJ is a grantee of the National Endowment for Democracy, the Washington-based democracy assistance group.
