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| Proletarian issue 18 (June 2007) |
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| Imperialist-inspired bloodbath in Somalia |
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¬Somalia is suffering an orgy of genocide by the Ethiopians under orders from US imperialism. In a crazed attempt to crush the masses that support the Islamic Courts Union, the Ethiopians have been bombing residential suburbs of Mogadishu. Salim Lone, writing in The Guardian of 28 April 2007, expressed his horror:
"This is the most lawless war of our generation. All wars of aggression lack legitimacy, but no conflict in recent memory has witnessed such mounting layers of illegality as the current one in Somalia. Violations of the UN charter and of international humanitarian law are regrettably commonplace in our age, and they abound in the carnage that the world is allowing to unfold in Mogadishu, but this war has in addition explicitly violated two UN security council resolutions. To complete the picture, one of these resolutions contravenes the charter itself.
"The complete impunity with which Ethiopia and the transitional Somali government have been allowed to violate these resolutions explains the ruthlessness of the military assaults that have been under way for six weeks now. The details of the atrocities being committed were formally acknowledged by a western government for the first time when Germany, which holds the current EU presidency, had its ambassador to Somalia, Walter Lindner, write a tough letter – made public on Wednesday – to Somalia's president, Abdullahi Yusuf.
"The letter condemned the indiscriminate use of air strikes and heavy artillery in Mogadishu's densely populated areas, the raping of women, the deliberate blocking of urgently needed food and humanitarian supplies, and the bombing of hospitals. This is a relentless drive to terrify and intimidate civilians belonging to clans from whose ranks fighters are challenging the occupation."
Hundreds have been killed in the indiscriminate bombing of residential areas in the last six weeks alone, while no fewer than 350,000 people have been driven from their homes and livelihoods. The aid that is being provided by various charitable organisations is being withheld from the refugees by the so-called Somali ‘government’, which is happy to see hundreds die of hunger and disease for the crime of wanting peace and security in their own land.
At the same time, we have the obscene spectacle of the ‘International Criminal Court’ issuing warrants for the arrest of two men who are supposed to have been involved in ‘genocide’ in Darfur! It is not in Sudan but in Somalia that genocide is genuinely taking place. Whatever the plight of the Darfuris, they are not being carpet bombed from the air by an enemy equipped with all the latest technological killing machines.
When is the International Court of Justice going to arrest George Bush, Meles Zenawi (the Ethiopian prime minister) and Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed – the US puppet ‘president’ of Somalia, who enjoys absolutely no popular support? Let them all know that there is no amount of brutality that can quench people's longing for justice, peace and security. The Somali people will win through.
On this issue, the European imperialists are at loggerheads with the Americans, who refuse to listen to the European warnings that, by acting as they are, they are only recruiting for Islamic fundamentalism and ensuring the ‘problem’ posed by nationalism in oppressed countries for imperialist ambitions to dominate the world is magnified rather than ‘solved’.
> Condemn US - Ethiopian aggression against Somalia - April 2007 |
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