Bartamaha (Ottawa):- it’s a brutal trend that has gone on for too long.
Over and over again, Canadians of Somali descent have ended up dead in Alberta as a result of violence.
The latest victims were Idiris Abess, 23, and Saed Adad, 22.
The two men were found dead in a Fort McMurray apartment complex last week. Both were known to police.
Police said Adad was from Toronto and Abess was from Fort McMurray.
RCMP Const. Karolina Malik told CTV.ca that police will not release the cause of their deaths. But investigators are certain they were murdered.
There is no province-wide count of how many people from the Somali community have been killed in Alberta, as the victims have been found in different jurisdictions.
But Ahmed Hussen, the president of the Canadian Somali Congress, says the death toll across the province is well into double-digits — unofficially standing at 29 — since the summer of 2005.
“It has been getting worse,” Hussen said in a telephone interview from Toronto, after spending 10 weeks in Alberta to learn more about the deaths and the stories behind them.
“It’s very concerning, there’s a lot of innocent people who are getting caught up in it.”
In Edmonton, Mahamad Accord has watched the trend carefully, as the death toll has crept upward in the city.
The executive director of Edmonton’s Alberta Somali Community Center says the recent Fort McMurray deaths left him saddened, but not shocked.
“We are going to lose even more of them than we have lost,” Accord said in a recent telephone interview from Edmonton, where he says 11 young men from the community have been slain in the last three years.
Demographics behind the deaths
The reasons behind the many deaths are not so easy to pin down.
Canadians from all different backgrounds headed to Alberta over the past decade to take advantage of the employment opportunities that resulted from the oil boom.
Among those groups were Canadians of Somali descent, many of whom migrated to Alberta from Ontario, Quebec and B.C. over the past seven years, said Accord.
And that is one of the reasons Accord wants the public to see the spate of Alberta deaths as a Canadian problem — not a Somali-Canadian problem — that has emerged.
“It is a Canadian issue,” said Accord.
The people being killed are part of a larger demographic of Canadians with Somalian-born parents. The “vast majority” of these young people were born in Canada or came to the country when they were very young, said Hussen.
According to statistics cited by Edmonton police and community members, four in five members of the national community are younger than 30. Sixty-eight per cent of the community is below the age of 14.
But despite growing up in Canada, young Canadians of Somali descent are often facing integration problems, say community leaders.
“It’s a matter of marginalization,” said Accord, explaining that many young community members feel they lack opportunities and that little is expected from them.
Hussen said these young people are often directed toward services geared to immigrants when they set out seeking help finding employment, training or other government-related programs, despite the fact they are born-and-bred Canadians.
“It’s the provision of the wrong kind of services,” said Hussen. “We’re no longer immigrants.”
A feeling of marginalization combined with what Hussen describes as the “very, very lucrative” drug trade in an oil-rich economy then sets a trap for some people to be drawn into trouble.
Edmonton police Supt. Brad Ward spent years working homicide and major crimes cases during his 31-year career and is well-acquainted with risks of the drug trade.
“When you have drugs that are related to a big profit potential, people want to protect that,” said Ward, speaking generally about the dangers of getting involved with the drug trade.
And that’s often reason enough for someone to end up dead.
Building relationships
Ward heads up the north division of Edmonton’s Community Policing Bureau, an area where many members of the local Somali community live.
Two years ago, there was very little contact between the police and the local Somali community.
Today, as the liaison officer to the Somali community, Ward is working hard to build relationships with community members, a trend that began with his predecessor in the same division.
And he likes what he sees.
“The community itself — the Edmonton Somali community — has done an awful lot to promote good citizenship of their youth,” Ward said, also giving credit for community efforts to promote education and employment and to break down barriers.
He has also learned about what concerns them most in a city that a police spokesman confirms has “several open and active investigations involving victims of Somalian descent.”
“I know that the community itself is very concerned about the future of the youth,” Ward said in a recent telephone interview.
They are also concerned about victimization, Ward said, as well as the high ratio of community homicides they have witnessed in Edmonton and the “wrong stereotypes that emerge from that.”
Ward said police have tried to communicate to community members that it is okay to approach them with questions and to reach out to them if they are in need.
In turn, Hussen and Accord said they are in favour of seeing more police resources devoted to solving the crimes afflicting their community.
They and their fellow community members have also reached out to politicians like Alberta Justice Minister Alison Redford, who is supposed to meet with Edmonton Somali community members within weeks, to see if there are other resources that can help them.
“We all work with the system to make a difference,” said Hussen.
But there is still progress that needs to be made.
There is also not a single Edmonton police member of Somali descent, though Ward said an appointment is being arranged for community members to learn about recruitment opportunities.
Cathy Prowse, a professor and former Calgary police officer, said recruitment from communities where parents came from war-torn countries is often a struggle.
In many cases, such parents have little faith in civilian or military members and they pass that distrust on to their kids.
“It can take a generation or two to overcome that,” Prowse told CTV.ca by phone from Calgary.
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Source: ctv.ca
