Twenty Somali “kids” killed in Edmonton, Canada in recent years

We’ve written about this “problem” in Canada previously—-drugs and gang violence in western Canada (Edmonton is the capital of Alberta, here).

From the Edmonton Journal:

Osman Barre has buried 20 young Somali men in Edmonton in the past four years.

The Somali sheikh is responsible for the Islamic ritual of washing and preparing the bodies of his community’s dead.

[….]

Too many times, the bodies before him have been victims of homicide, all of them men.

[….]

Young Somali men have been coming to oilrich Alberta from southern Ontario over the past decade, some to find lucrative jobs, others tempted by the opportunity to make fast cash selling drugs.

[….]

Across the province, community leaders say as many as 32 men have been killed. Not all were involved in drugs or gangs, but many were known to police when they died.

[….]

Unofficial estimates peg the Somali population across Canada at 150,000 to 200,000.

Mohamed Abdi, communications co-ordinator for the Somali Canadian Cultural Society of Edmonton, estimated the city’s population numbers between 10,000 and 15,000.

[….]

The recent string of killings has created a poor image of Somalis in the city, he said, when the vast majority are law-abiding and work hard to build lives for themselves and their families.

They just need stuff—programs($), community centers($), activities($) for the kids, that’s all!

“These are Canadians who need integration. They need mentorship programs, they need workshops.”

Where have I heard this before?  Oh yes, Minneapolis when Somali “kids” kill each other and here is one from Columbus, Ohio—just give us more taxpayer funded stuff.

Canada: Arrests made in Sri Lankan human smuggling case

This is an update of the smuggling case we first reported here in 2009.  (Visit that post for background on Tamil Tigers)

From The Province:

Mounties arrested four men in the Toronto area on Tuesday in connection with the MV Ocean Lady, the freighter that brought 76 illegal migrants to Canada’s West Coast more than a year-and-a-half ago.

The arrests are the first stemming from RCMP investigations into humansmuggling networks in Southeast Asia that have sent hundreds of Sri Lankan refugee claimants to Canada aboard two freighters.

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said his government welcomes the news of the arrests.

Canada is working on even tougher laws, but this sounds pretty tough to me!

Anyone convicted of helping more than 10 undocumented migrants enter Canada faces up to life imprisonment and a $1-million fine under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The Conservatives have drafted a bill that would toughen Canada’s antihuman-smuggling policies but it has not yet been made into law.

This reminds me, whatever happened to the Church World Service connected human smuggler reported in the New York Times here in 2007?  She was taking more than ten Haitians at a time across the border into Canada.  See our previous posts on that story here and here.

I just wrote about Church World Service spending your tax dollars in Pakistan here yesterday.  You might want to use our search function for ‘Church World Service’—they are busy little taxpayer-funded social justice advocates at 475 Riverside Dr., New York, NY.

Sorry Canadian readers, I kind of drifted off track from human smuggling to an American NGO (or maybe it isn’t so far off track)….