Forty-two more bodies were discovered today in a mass grave at the Biyo Shiinaha water wells some twenty-five kilometres or so to the north of Hargeisa, the capital city of the Republic of Somaliland.
The remains of the 42 victims of the brutal Siyad Barre military regime and the fratricide genocide it waged against civilians in the 80s were discovered on the charted path of new water pipelines to boost water supply to the city. All were found unceremoniously lumped together in a shallow mass grave.
Buried with the victims were bundled personal effects they were either carrying or holding on to at the time: clothes, prayer beads, cooking utensils, and the like – with at least one of them clutching a bottle of perfume – indicating who they were and the fact that they were civilians that the regime’s wilful spree of revenge killing caught up with and/or killed for intimidation purposes.
“It is very probable that these people were among civilians fleeing the indiscriminate strafing of MiG planes flown by South African mercenary pilots flying from and landing back on Hargeisa military airstrips,” one expert pointed out.
Ministers and officials from the Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs, the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Industries, Ministry of Water Resources, the Mayor, the Hargeisa Water Authority, prominent religious clerks and a great number of the area residents paid last respects to the exhumed remains, giving them a proper burial.
This mass grave is the latest discovered of hundreds of similar desecrated grounds concealing the remains of thousands and thousands of civilians fleeing civilians that the Somalia-commanded military regime pursued, caught up with and summarily executed on the spot.
The graves never fail to highlight the grave mistake the international community is making against the people of Somaliland once more as if the IC wishes to stand witness to yet more and more vicious mass slaughters of Somalilanders.
The perpetrators of this Somaliland ‘holocaust’ still remain free and at large in places such as the United States, Canada and Europe – shielded, fed and defended on the expense of painful memories that Somalilanders live with
‘Enough’, the world was told today at the mass grave, ‘was enough’.
