LONDON (Halbeeg News)-Somali-British parents are sending their children to Somalia to protect them from gang life and alarming knife attacks among the youths.
According to the Guardian newspaper report, the British teenagers are being sent by their parents to the horn of the Africa nation which itself is recovering from a series of terror attacks, because of concern that the police cannot protect them from knife crime.
Representatives from north London’s Somali community say hundreds of children have been flown to Somalia and Kenya because of rising concerns over drug gangs and the criminal networks that use children to transport drugs from cities to the provinces.
Somalis who arrived in the UK after fleeing their country during its 1990s civil war told the Observer that many of their sons had asked to leave the UK because of drug gangs and the threat of violence.
Rakhia Ismail, Islington deputy mayor, said: “Sending them away has become the only way they can be safer. , but nobody has listened. So many children have gone abroad. Two weeks ago, there was a stabbing, and a child was taken back home two days later.”
The revelations follow a week of heated date over the causes of and potential solutions to Britain’s knife crime epidemic.
Seventeen people have died after attacks in London alone since the start of 2019.
The high levels of violence facing parts of British society are evident in the testimony of Islington’s sizeable Somali community.
Representatives say 50-70% have been directly affected by county lines and knife crime.
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