Somali immigrants in Finland agonising over events in their former home country

Abdirahim Hussein

Abdiaziz Godah

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The thousands of Somali immigrants in Finland are fraught and distressed when following closely the current events in Somalia. Particularly older Somalis are depressed by the fact that all recent news reports are shattering the hopes that their former home country could eventually calm down.
     
All that the Somali community can do is to read online news and try to phone their relatives in Somalia in order to make sure that everything is all right.
      ”Older members of the community, over-40-year-olds, still think of returning home. However, today the situation is so bad that it is not possible to go to Somalia, especially to Southern Somalia. For them the situation is crushing”, says culture consultant Abdirahim Hussein, who came to Finland at the age of 15 in 1994. Hussein is an active member of the Centre Party.
      Hussein notes that he is unable to imagine a Somalia at peace, as he has never seen that. At present, the situation looks unusually bad.
     
”I agree with those who say that Somalia is living the darkest era in its history. The government and the groups fighting against it are all equally guilty”, Hussein feels.
      Abdiaziz Godah, the Vice Chairman of the Somali League in Finland, says that life in Mogadishu has become extremely difficult during the current year.
     
According to Godah, the situation is attributable to the fact that the insurgent groups competing with each other and spreading all over the country are demanding all people to start supporting them.
      "It is effectively a case of 'You either join us or leave the area'”, says Godah, who himself comes from Modgadishu. He also says that suicide bombers are a new phenomenon in the area.
     
The Somali immigrants in Finland are following the events in their former home country mainly via the Internet, for example Hiiran Online (http://www.hiiraan.com/) or Universal TV (http://tvuniversal.tv/NS/).
      They keep contact with their relatives in Somalia by phone. It is expensive to call over a mobile phone, but the lines nearly always function.
     
”When I heard the news of the attack at the Muna Hotel, I immediately called home”, says Zahra Abdulla, a member of the Helsinki City Council, representing the Green League. Her parents had been listening to the noise of bullets at home, but nobody had been hurt.
      Today, e-mail messages to Somalia are hardly ever sent, Hussein and Godah say.
      The situation in Mogadishu has become so chaotic that it is simply too risky to go to Internet cafés.
     
On Tuesday, more than 30 people were killed in an attack on a Mogadishu hotel by the members of the radical Islamist insurgent group Al-Shabab, disguised as government soldiers. Among the victims were at least six parliamentarians.
      At the beginning of the year Finland had 11,881 residents speaking the Somali language as their mother tongue. About three fifths of them were born in Somalia.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Somali population in Finland growing fast (7.5.2010)
  Somalis in Finland 20 years: Difficult road to paid work (27.4.2010)

See also:
  Somali-born screenwriter depicts characters as individuals, not representatives of a race (11.5.2010)

Links:
  Somali League in Finland
  Somali Community in Finland (Wikipedia)

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