Please join IFAJ for a webinar on press freedom
3 May at 14:00 GMT
The guest speaker will be Somalian journalist Daud Abdi Daud, who has a fascinating story to tell about fighting for press freedom in his home country even when exiled to neighbouring Uganda and Kenya.
Daud was going to participate as a speaker in our Press Freedom Panel during our e-congress in August last year. During that time, he was living in exile in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. But Kampala is known for housing a lot of secret agents from other countries and during the time of our congress Daud had to hide from a group of Al-Shabab agents sneaking around in Kampala together with the local police.
Daud Abdi Daud, born in 1984 at Banadir hospital in Mogadishu, the capital city of Somalia, is the holder of a bachelor’s degree in journalism and mass communication, a graduate of St. Paul’s University. He is an agriculture and science journalist in Somalia and the Secretary-General of the association for Somali Media for Environment, Science, Health and Agriculture, SOMESHA. He has also been the representative of SOMESHA on the executive committee of IFAJ and a member of the IFAJ membership committee. During the last year, Daud, who is a Christian, fled his home country after multiple threats from extremists and government forces and tried to settle down in Kampala, Uganda. He has lived in exile for several years before, in Kenya from 2008 to 2014. During those years, he occasionally travelled back to Somalia, among other reasons to defend press freedom.
In 2013 he was defending a colleague, Abdiaziz Abdinur Ibrahim. The same year, because of that, Daud himself was arrested without charge. Human Rights Watch made a statement about his case, and he was released after a week in prison.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2013/02/11/somalia-second-journalist-detained-without-charge
Reporters without Borders was following the case too:
https://rsf.org/en/news/reporter-freed-after-being-held-week
Daud has advocated the opening of Somali Christian FM radio in Mogadishu. He has been involved in the projects for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (PCVE) in Somalia by working very closely with the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) centre for excellence, with UN agencies and civil society organizations.
Last year, Daud then lived in exile in Kampala to escape threats from Islamic groups and the government based on his religious beliefs and his reporting.
However, in January this year he decided to move to Nairobi, Kenya, again. He is there now building an online Christian broadcast network speaking out against violent extremism in Somalia.
Please sign up for the webinar by 2 May 2022 to receive the link to the free Zoom session.