Why so many somali-canadians who go west end up dead.

[Wadani]

I agree with Kool-Kat, Somali parents have used their children as sacrificial lambs offered on the altar of the mighty dollar. These kids stood no chance from the outset. I grew up in one of these notorious Toronto neighbourhoods, and inta ka badbaaday waa faro ku tiris.

[guerilla]

I know a family with a 15 year old son, he gets up at 5.45 am, 7 days a week to do a paper round before school. He's projected to get all A's in his up coming GCSE's next year, he's polite, friendly and uber confident. You don't need to be a prophet to know he's not headed down the road of other Somali kids in his class. He was lucky to have been born to sensible, hardworking parents.

I don't know much about those dead young men but I'm guessing a lot of them didn't have solid background support from mommy and daddy.

[raula]

^^good kid.

 

Apo, how do you know don't mess w/a sista tha's packin' bro!

[Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar]

Labadoodaba meesha lagu dilay kama imaan, inkastoo midkood degnaan jiray meeshaas. Both lived in Vaughan ('Foon'), 'the city above Toronto' as it likes to call itself. It is a mid-sized city of 300,000 people. It doesn't have gang problems, either.

[GaraadMon]

It has nothing to do with where you live. The fact that somalis goof up in great numbers around the world should be evidence enough.

[Aaliyyah]

It has a lot to do with the neighborhoods these men were raised.

 

I attended today their janazah prayer. We prayed on them after the jumma prayer. Alle

ha u naxaristo I only had a chance to see one of the moms the place was packed. My heart was heavy seeing her cry. I didn't know her personally but 26 years ayey korinasay waqtigu wax tari laha bay marasay.

.

[Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar]

Toronto Somali community’s cry: ‘Our kids are dying’

 

Last week, Abdul Warsame spent an afternoon at the Khalid Bin-Walid mosque in the Rexdale neighbourhood mourning 28-year-old Abdulaziz Farah. In a fiery sermon to the hundreds gathered, he warned parents and youngsters that “it’s a matter of time until another Somali kid is killed.”

 

Within days, those words had come true.

 

Four days later, early on Tuesday, two young men were shot to death on Jamestown Cres., in a notorious west-end neighbourhood. They were the fifth and sixth Somali-Canadian men to be killed in gun violence in Toronto since early June.

 

“I am heartbroken,” said Warsame, co-founder of a mentorship program for Somali-Canadian youth. “What should we do … our kids are dying.”

 

He’s not exaggerating.

 

The bloodletting started when Ahmed Hassan, 24, was shot dead at the Eaton Centre on June 2. Hussein Hussein, 23, died on June 23. Abdulle Elmi, 25, on July 8. Abdulaziz Farah, 28, on Sept. 8.

 

And then on Tuesday, Suleiman Ali and Warsame Ali, both 26, were found dead with gunshot wounds in an alley in an Etobicoke townhouse complex.

 

The spate of violence has left the Somali community in Toronto crushed, its leaders desperately seeking answers.

 

They have held meetings throughout the summer to understand why their young men are getting killed and how they can help keep them safe. They’ve asked federal and provincial politicians for more programs and services to help young people get through school and find jobs. They have asked Toronto Police to help.

 

“We need help … I am not ashamed to say that now,” said Mohamed Farah, who works with Midaynta Community Services, an organization that helps Somali-Canadians.

 

There are an estimated 80,000 Somalis in Toronto, another few thousand in Ottawa and, community leaders say, about 3,000 in Fort McMurray, Alta.

 

For long, the community has battled poverty and unemployment. It tried to deal with many single-parent households. The unemployment rate for Somali-Canadians is above 20 per cent, the highest of any ethnic group.

 

But in 2009, it woke up to the grim reality of radicalism.

 

Between 2009 and 2011, at least two dozen young men from Toronto and Ottawa — and two young women — disappeared, allegedly to fight alongside Al Shabaab in Somalia, an Islamist youth militia aligned with Al Qaeda.

 

As the community grappled with that conundrum, news started trickling in that more than two dozen young men, lured to oil-rich Alberta with the promise of good jobs, have died in what police called an escalating gang and drug turf war.

 

And now this.

 

“This is hard, I know. There seems to be bad news coming continuously from the community… but we, too, want solutions,” said Ahmed Hussen, president of the Canadian Somali Congress.

 

He has been talking to the parents of the dead young men, to figure out whether the killings were gang-related. Toronto Police detectives have refused to comment.

 

“We were able to turn Alberta around,” said Hussen. “Hopefully, we can do it here too, with everyone’s help.”

 

Warsame, who is usually soft-spoken, said his message to parents was explicit: “We are in a crisis, we need to own up to the problem. We have to put a mechanism in place to protect our young people and provide better environment for them and, most importantly, we need to understand their lifestyle. The killings won’t stop otherwise.”

 

He has told young people to “get out of this game and not retaliate.”

 

“What else can we do?” said Warsame. “Everyone knows poverty and unemployment are big problems in our community… but no one seems to do anything. Politicians hold meetings, yes, but it takes them months to get back.”

 

But Warsame, who is highly respected among young men in the community, says elders are reaching out to families and neighbourhoods, offering every possible help with raising children.

 

“We are doing what we can at our level,” said Warsame. “It’s ironic; we fled Somalia to give a better, peaceful life to our children. And there’s violence here, too.”

 

While Somali-Canadians admit the community is going through a rough patch, its leaders haven’t lost hope for their young people.

 

They point to role models such as Fuad Mohomed, a 17-year-old from the Lawrence Heights neighbourhood who studies at Contact Alternative School. He’s a poet, basketball player and mentor.

 

Warsame often brings him to talk to the teenagers he mentors through his program in Rexdale.

 

“I want better for myself,” said Mohomed. “I want to make something of my life. When you look around your surroundings and take in the environment, you want better … obviously. And in order to do better, you have to want better. That is what I tell others.”

 

He realizes there are challenges in the community — there are single mothers, there is poverty, unemployment, lack of opportunities.

 

“But there is always a way out … we know that.”

Koronto Star

[Wadani]

No amount of Somali community townhall meetings are gonna solve this problem. People fail to realize that hip-hop inspired gangsterism is not just a lifestyle but a full blown ideology, with its own code of ethics, dress code, and norms of behaviour. Once someone fully internalizes it turning them around becomes no different than rehabilitating a radicalist shabaabi or a right-wing racist tea partier; next to impossible. Our parents have experimented with and utterly failed my generation by refusing to move out of government housing, which are cesspools of crime and poverty that produce hopeless and destructive youth. So to any parent who may be reading this; there is no need to attend meetings to discuss this problem...JUST MOVE THE HELL OUT OF GOV HOUSING!!! Then hopefully the young ones will have a chance.

[Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar]

*Sigh*

 

Family grieving after teen dies in Weston Rd. shooting late Sunday

 

A 16-year-old boy has been identified by his family after being fatally shot Sunday at a Weston Rd. apartment.

 

Family identified Yusuf Tifow, 16, as the boy gunned down in a Weston Rd. apartment building late Sunday night.

Police have not yet confirmed the teen’s identity.

 

Family members streamed into the apartment where Tifow lived with his mother and four brothers Monday morning, shocked to learn of his violent death.

 

“He was a nice boy, a bright boy,” said his aunt, Maria Yusuf, outside the family’s apartment.

Maria Yusuf said the boy loved to play basketball.

 

“I can’t believe it still,” she said through tears.

 

“He was a quiet kid,” said a family friend who did not want her name used. “He was his mom’s best friend.”

 

She said the boy was affectionately called “his mom’s purse” because the pair were inseparable.

 

The 16-year-old was well-liked by people in the Scarlett Rd apartment building. The family friend said he would wait with kids for the school bus in the morning, watching them for their parents.

 

His mother was too overcome with grief to speak. Periodically cries erupted from her apartment Monday morning.

 

Tifow grew up in the Scarlett Rd. building with his family. The friend said they have no idea what led to him being in the Weston Rd. building, which is directly across from where he lived, on the other side of the Humber River.

 

“They were shocked they found him in a random building,” said the friend. “They don’t know why he was in there.”

Police were called to the 19th floor of 2240 Weston Rd., north of Lawrence Ave. W, just before midnight.

 

The teen was without vital signs at the scene, and pronounced dead at Sunnybrook Trauma Centre.

Police set up a perimeter around the Weston Rd apartment building Monday.

 

Patricia Fernandes lives on the 15th floor of the building. She said she heard a loud argument late last night, but fell asleep.

In the morning she heard the teen had been killed.

 

“My heart dropped. My heart dropped,” she said. “It’s devastating. It’s sad. Especially because he’s 16.”

 

The forensic identification team was on-scene Monday morning. Police have not released the boy’s name.

No arrests have been made.

Toronto Star

_____________________

 

It is no time to blame anyone laakiin shan wiil kan u yar jiro 15 aabahoodana ka tagay, Minnesota ka doorbiday, gabar kale iska guursaday, hooyadiina ku rafaato korintooda in Toronto. Imagine five boys isku xig xigo, from 15 to 21 camal now. Eebboow.

[Safferz]

AUN, he was a baby I don't know why the Toronto Star decided the appropriate photo to accompany the article is his lifeless body.