A documentary film The Silent Cry, produced by a team of young passionate British students, in partnership with African Rights Monitor, hosted a special screening in Toronto, on Saturday November 28, 2009. Over four hundred people from the Greater Toronto area attended the screening.

The Silent Cry is based on stories depicting the shattered lives of Somali refugees from the Ogaden region of Ethiopia. These stories were discovered by the Silent Cry producers when they visited Nairobi, Kenya, during their last Spring break. This group of students’ initial purpose to vacation in Kenya was fundamentally altered after they had met, “Omar” a local taxi driver, who shared with them his personal tragic story. Omar fled the Ogaden after losing his children and wife to the brutalities of the Woyanne regime soldiers in the Ogaden. This team of students then made a trip to Ifo Refugee Camp, in Northern Kenya, which is a destination for many survivors fleeing the devastating circumstances in the Somali region of Ethiopia.

A picture conveys thousand words, thanks to this team of students. We now can see images of the hidden truth about the suffering of the people of Ogaden shown through this powerful documentary, Silent Cry. The atrocities in the Ogaden have been compared to the atrocities in Darfur, with zero media attention due to the total lack of access by international media and NGOs, and as such been termed the “Hidden Darfur” of the Horn of Africa.

Three members of the Silent Cry team, Abdallah Abdi, Ahmed Abdalle, and Abdi-Shukri Omar who is the narrator of the documentary, were present in Toronto for the screening of the documentary. After a warm welcome by the a member of the Greater Toronto Community, Huda Yusuf, the Executive Director of the African Rights Monitor (ARM), a non profit group, presented a brief presentation on rights and responsibilities of citizens in democratic societies and some of the responsibilities and obligations on the part of governments to protect their citizen.

Then the Silent Cry team delivered passionate presentations before the screening, sharing with audience the impact filming this documentary had on them and how it changed their lives. Then when the audience watched Silent Cry, they were moved to tears by the stories of these refugees.

Followed by the Silent Cry team, highlighting some next steps, and emphasizing their commitment now to raising awareness and breaking the silence around the suffering of the people of Ogaden, and have asked the audience to join in this journey. The team have challenged the participants to join this campaign of advocacy and assist in bringing the attention of the international community to the plight of the people of this region. To drive the point home, Fowsia Abdulkadir, an independent researcher and human rights activist, put the Silent Cry stories in a historical context, underlining the fact that Somalis have historically been marginalized in Ethiopia. Somalis have been oppressed and discriminated against by successive Ethiopian regimes; however, under the current regime led by Meles Zenawi, human rights abuses and the suffering of Somalis in Ethiopia have reached a level it has never reached before.

The evening was concluded with poetry reading by young Somalis, who recited poems dedicated to some of the refugee children in the documentary. The screening of Silent Cry in Toronto was overwhelmingly successful, and the event was positively received by the Toronto community.

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