by Mohamed Ibrahim Haji Abdi
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Residents of Hargeisa city are distressing about the increase of child abduction in the city and why the local government has not spoken about the issue. It was last week when hadhwanagnews and Geeska Afrika a local newspaper reporter that that an eleven years old by the name of Fuad Abdi Mohamed was kidnapped by four men that consisted of three Caucasian men and one Somaliland driver as he was walking. According to Fuad and his mother Asha Hariir Jama around 2pm in the afternoon a neighbors’ child who was with Fuad came running to the family’s home to inform them that their son was taken in a red Toyota 4 by 4 model Surf by four men whom three of them were foreigners and one local driver.
Mrs. Asha Jama soon after notified the local police about her child’s abduction and shortly a citywide search began. After few hours later Fuad appeared walking at the family’s home where he enlighten family and friends his ordeal, “in the afternoon my friend and I were walking next Star hotel when a Toyota 4 runner stopped next to us, the driver and three men told us that they would give us a ride to the airport and so we should get in the car with them, I went with them but my friend ran home”.
After Fuad got in the vehicle he was taken to a big house on the outskirt of Hargeisa next to the airport where the men put him in a room and then placed him on a bed. Fuad told his mother and the two newspaper outlets reporters, after the men put him on the bed they placed a cold pack next to his kidney and after few minutes they told him that he is not well and that he should take few cookies that will cure him and he ought to head home. Before they let him out of the residence he was warned that they placed a memory chip in him that tells them where he lives. If he told anyone about what took place that they will come and find him.
This is not the first incident of such that has taken place in Hargeisa in recent months and it emerges that no one is willing to speak about it in public. It was only a few weeks ago when the German national Gunter Bischoss was convicted of degenerate behavior and shooting immoral movies in Hargeisa. The incident of Gunter Bischoss was a shocked to the entire country and our people began to ask one another how could this happen in Somaliland. Let me be frank, this occurred because our people have not been exposed to outsiders and the few that they come across are either NGO workers or fake businessman whom they see them as savior. It is our custom to be benevolence and hospitable to a foreigner which is a good thing to be proud of however in today’s society we have to be apprehensive to those that we let them into the country.
Those of us who live in the Diaspora see in the news of child traffickers and predators that go to third world countries pretending to be saviors but in return are corrupting and abusing the locals. These foreigners that we welcome them in our country with open arms are not all innocent or good people. Do not get me wrong there are good foreigners in Somaliland helping our people but at the same time our people should be vigilant. Now that the world is aware of Somaliland’s democracy and safe heaven there will be more foreigners coming into the country. Some of these folks might be child predators, child traffickers or human organ traffickers therefore our NGOs and Diaspora must protect our people by educating them. Our government should make mandatory that all foreigners coming into the country must provide a criminal background check and anyone who is verified to have a criminal background have to be consider criminal inadmissible into Somaliland.
God Bless Somaliland
Mohamed Ibrahim Haji Abdi is the founder of SomalilandPress and a consultant with Thomson Reuters.