London teens sent to Africa to escape knife crime

Knife crime – Hundreds of British teenagers are being sent by their parents to East Africa to avoid knife crime in the UK, representatives of the Somali community say. Why are they taking this drastic choice?

Some names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees.

“In those few years I was doing my A-levels it was tough. Just seeing people being dropped every other day, being stabbed,” Yusuf tells the Victoria Derbyshire programme from his new home in Kenya.

“London’s not the place to be for a teenager.”

Yusuf was born and raised in London but moved to Nairobi after a close friend in his neighbourhood was stabbed to death.

It is a decision an increasing number of parents are taking, for their children’s safety.

Of the 100 people stabbed to death in the UK so far this year, 8% were of Somali heritage, according to the Rise Projects which works with young British Somalis in north London.

Jamal Hassan mentors young men in London, many from Somali families. He explains parents “want to protect that child by all means necessary”.

“If it means that child doesn’t finish school, college, university or he will not have a good job by the time you come for them the future is not really important.

“What’s important is that child’s life.”

One mother who had sent her child to Africa told him she could now sleep at night, because she knew any police sirens she heard were not for her son.

Jamal went to Kenya as a teenager, when he says problems for him in London “were at their peak”.

He says there are parallels with the present day.

“One of the things I’ll never forget, is the fact that when you walk in the streets in Kenya you don’t have to look over your shoulder.

“Here I could travel in and out of the city, go and visit whoever I wanted, and it was good. I felt a sense of freedom.

“But for these kids [in London that can be] life and death.”

‘Permanent damage’

Others, such as Abdul, who is in his early 20s, left London because they had started to get into trouble with the police.

“When I came here it was like a clean sheet,” Abdul said.

“No-one knew me, no-one knows my history. There [in London], you have people that look like you going after you.

“My mum feels I’m much safer here than anywhere else in the world.”

Parents say they do not view the move as a long-term solution – some children stay in Africa while others return.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) advises against all travel to Somalia, including Somaliland, and highlights a heightened threat of terrorism and kidnappings, across Kenya.

But Amina sent her 15-year-old son to Somaliland, when she was worried about the new friends with whom he was mixing.

In his year there, she says he became a studious child again.

He had even wanted to stay in East Africa.

But within 17 days of being brought back to the UK in November 2018, he was stabbed four times.

“He’s been completely traumatised by the experience,” she says.

“They damaged his bladder, his kidneys, his liver. He’s got permanent damage.

“He was safer there [in Somaliland] than he was here… 100% more safe than in London.”

Source: BBC.CO.UK