Editorial: Newspaper burning immortalizes media defiance
Bashir Goth
True to the superstition of the day, Friday the 13th of October 2006 was a day of bad luck for Somaliland press freedom. On this day, mobs of people, led by religious fanatics assembled in a public square in the second Somaliland city of Buroa, and burned editions of Haatuf newspaper, Somaliland's leading paper. This was the first time in Somaliland's living memory that forces of darkness tried to kill enlightenment.

The newspaper burners also threatened that the paper 's offices will be their next target if it did not stop its critical reporting on Islamists. But what they did not say out loud is that it will be the reporters themselves that would be burning next time. They don't have to say it because we know they are capable of doing it. We have seen it in Iraq, in Sudan, in Pakistan, in Somalia and in other places.
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