By Mohamed Ali Bile and Guled Mohamed
Mogadishu July 13 (Reuters) – Somalia’s newly dominant Islamists shot and killed a man on Wednesday after he protested the imposition of new taxes by the group that has rapidly consolidated its power in strategic areas of the country.
The Islamists, who were financed by businessmen looking to improve security, took over the international airport last week and on Wednesday said they had taken control of Mogadishu’s main seaport from clan members who have been controlling it.
The new taxes on businessmen and small-scale traders sparked a protest of about 100 people in Jowhar, a city the Islamist militias seized last month after they outgunned US-backed warlords to take the capital Mogadishu.
About 40 young men with plastic bags to collect cash began levying the taxes on the orders of a new administration that the Islamist movement, which sprang from sharia courts in Mogadishu, established in the town 90km north of the capital.
“One of the demonstrators was shot dead by the administration’s militia,” Siyad Mohamed, an Islamist militia leader based in Jowhar, told Reuters.
Trader Fatuma Ahmed, who sells household items like soap and toothpaste, said the tax forced her to close her tiny business.
“I am not in a position to pay the taxes. Whatever I get from my small business, I feed my family with,” said Ahmed, mother of three. She had been asked to pay 2 000 Somali shillings – about 14 US cents.
Source: Reuters, July 13, 2006
