Hiiraan Online
November 29, 2008
Toronto, Canada (HOL) - an event organized by Amnesty International and hosted by the Somali community was held in Toronto on November 28, 2008. This is one of the North America speaking tours organized by Amnesty to raise human rights violations committed by all parties to the conflict in Somalia. While all of the speakers discussed briefly the human rights violations, the main speaker of the night was Zam Zam Abdulle, a rights defender who travelled from Somalia to give the audiences first hand account of these violations as collected and documented by herself and her photojournalist Somali colleague Mr. Abukar Albadri.
Zam Zam Abdulle
Abdullahi spoke about risks she has taken to document these violations and the threats she had received from time to time not knowing which party of the conflict these threats were emanating from, and these threats were intended to stop her from reporting these atrocities committed mostly by the TFG/ Ethiopian alliance against civilians as well as selective target killings by the insurgents.
Abdulla also spoke about the Amnesty report of May 2007 titled Routinely Targeted: Attacks on Civilians in Somalia and showed a very moving and powerful pictures taken by Abukar Albadri of civilians under constant siege. The night ended with question and answer session. Lynn Fredrickson of Amnesty international US, Keith and Gloria of Amnesty Canada respectively, spoke about human rights violations in the general context and in particular their campaign on raising the Somali human rights violations throughout the international communities. More importantly, they are presenting recommendations to the officials of governments of the countries they are touring.
Hiiraan Online