BURAO, Somalia Aug 26 (Garowe Online) -
Police forces in Somalia’s breakaway republic of Somaliland arrested a television reporter in the city of Burao, Radio Garowe reported Tuesday.
Fowzi Saleban Bindhe, a journalist working for London-based Universal TV, was arrested after he reported about opposition party Kulmiye’s Central Committee convention in Burao.
The opposition party, Kulmiye, and its leader Ahmed Silanyo is preparing for presidential elections in March 2009.
Somaliland Information Minister Ahmed Haji Dahir told reporters that Mr. Bindhe’s arrest is linked to a government decree placing a temporary halt on Universal TV’s operations in Somaliland “until they get licensed.”
Recently, two Universal TV journalists were temporarily detained in the separatist region’s capital Hargeisa for similar reasons.
Jama Ismail Shabel, chairman of the Kulmiye party convention, condemned the reporter’s arrest and called on the Somaliland administration to “stop the oppression of free media.”
Somaliland, in Somalia's northwest, unilaterally declared independence in 1991 but has not gained international recognition.
Source: Garowe Online
