Group items tagged

MOGADISHU, Somalia June 21 (Garowe Online) - The United Nations' Special Representative to Somalia, Mr. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, has raised growing concern about years of environment destruction in the East African country of Somalia. Speaking with the BBC last week, Mr. Ould-Abdallah indicated that the UN has "reliable information" that chemical, toxic and possibly nuclear waste has been dumped along Somalia's shores for years by unnamed companies and individuals.

MOSCOW, June 27 (RIA Novosti) - Somalia hopes Russian companies will take part in the development of uranium deposits, and oil and natural gas production, the Somali ambassador to Russia said Friday. "Today we say: let's cooperate. Somalia is a very rich country, this is the main basin of oil and gas on the territory of the Horn of Africa," Mohamed Handule told a RIA Novosti press conference.

"European states are still using African coasts as a dumping ground of toxic waste, even after enactment of legislation aimed at ending the practice by the European Union. The worst examples of such dumping in the recent past, according to a report by the international environmental campaign group Greenpeace, is at the Somali port of Eel Ma'aan, north of Mogadishu. Greenpeace is now calling on the United Nations to investigate the dumping of toxic and radioactive materials in Somalia. In a 36-page document titled "Toxic Ships," the UK-based group claims that it has photographic evidence from an inconclusive investigation by the Italian authorities into the suspected burying of shipping containers filled with toxic waste inside the foundations of the port at Eel Ma'aan, in the 1990s."

Somali pirates have accused European firms of dumping toxic waste off the Somali coast and are demanding an $8m ransom for the return of a Ukranian ship they captured, saying the money will go towards cleaning up the waste. The ransom demand is a means of "reacting to the toxic waste that has been continually dumped on the shores of our country for nearly 20 years", Januna Ali Jama, a spokesman for the pirates, based in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, said.

The Huffington Post ran an interesting feature today, just one day after Capt. Richard Phillips was rescued from that hostage situation in Somalian waters. The feature is an essay written by a Somalian-Canadian singer/activist and explains why Somalians don't condemn, and sometimes even encourage, their pirates. The argument has been tossed around the Internet a bit, but I haven't seen it much in mainstream media, and especially not now that we've just recovered one of our very own from a dangerous situation. The argument runs: Many Somali pirates are just trying to keep Somalia's waters clean.