Rakiya Omaar

Rakiya Omaar was kicked out of her director’s job at Africa Watch, the US-controlled human rights organization, for saying the US ‘rescue mission’ to her native Somalia was doing more harm than good." In the same New Internationalist story she notes that "As director of the human rights group Africa Watch for four-and- half years, with special responsibility for research in Somalia, I had been immersed in chronicling Somalia’s nightmares and the cruelties that awaited even those who managed to escape abroad." The story ends by noting that "Since leaving Africa Watch, Rakiya Omaar has become co-director of a new London-based human rights organization called African Rights."

"On December third [1992], the prominent international human rights group, Human Rights Watch, fired the executive director of its Africa Watch program. Rakiya Omaar, a Somali native and Africa Watch founder, was dismissed “for insubordination and failure to abide by our internal procedures on establishing policy.” Omaar has come out strongly opposed to the U.S. deployment."