Refugees are being 'killed like dogs'

Refugees are being 'killed like dogs'

Tuesday, August 22, 2006
By Karen Breytenbach
Cape Times

As two more Somali shopkeepers in Khayelitsha were gunned down by robbers on Sunday, many in the Somali refugee community feel increasingly fearful about being "killed like dogs" by local thugs, while the government and the United Nations do little to help them.

While neither the police nor the Department of Home Affairs could say on Monday how many have been killed in the province in the past month, local Somalis estimate the death toll to be between 14 and 25 in the Cape metropole alone.

A spokesperson for the community, from Langa, who asked not to be named, said he counted 25 murders in the province during the past month.

'Every day someone is killed'

This included three murders in Stellenbosch, four in Khayelitsha, two in Delft, one in Mitchells' Plain and a few on the Garden Route.

"Every day someone is killed. My cousin was murdered in Khayelitsha two weeks ago and now I have no one. I don't know what to do. The rest of the members of my tribal clan are on their way back to Somalia, but I can't afford it. They said if they are going to get killed anyway, they would rather die at home near their families. The doctor said I have become sick with stress," he said.

The young trader said the time had come for the UN High Commission for Refugees and the SA government to step in to protect them.

A Somali shopkeeper in Khayelitsha, Nansh Mohamed, said: "We fled from war and came to democratic South Africa, thinking our lives would be secure, but it's not so. We are unsafe here and we cannot defend ourselves as we did at home, where we fought the militias. We are the most targeted foreigners in the country.

"Mohamed said the murders were most probably because of "business jealousy" from locals who perceived them as rich.

'Business jealousy'

"In Somalia, if someone murders they are killed. People don't steal from each other. Here, if someone is arrested for robbing you, you see him back on the street the next week and you don't know if he will come back to kill you."

Mohamed was a close friend of Sugow Salah, 30, and Siyad Shukri, 35, who were killed at their cash store in Bonga Avenue in Khayelitsha Site B after 9pm on Sunday. Cash and goods were stolen. A group of armed gunmen first shot Shukri. A bullet from a heavy-calibre firearm entered his body through his left arm and exited through his right.

Salah, who was outside at his car, was shot in the back of the head as he tried to run away.

As the police arrived at the scene at around 9.45pm, a large group of Somalis barricaded the shop to prevent the police from taking the bodies to a mortuary to have them "cut up, in contradiction to Muslim faith". The police eventually fired rubber bullets to control the crowd.

Police spokesperson Billy Jones said two people had reported injuries from rubber bullets. "They wouldn't understand that we have an arrangement with the Muslim community that autopsies are conducted early the next day for burial before the next sunset. Our management will approach the UN... to intervene to improve communication".

Source: Cape Times, Aug 22, 2006