Eritrean Community Leader Tries to Ease Tensions

ERITREAN community leader Berhan Ahmed has urged the community not to marginalise the large population of Somalians in Flemington in the wake of anti-terrorist raids last week.

A pre-dawn operation involving 400 officers from the Australian Federal Police, Victoria Police, NSW Police and Australian Security Intelligence Organisation resulted in the arrest of five people, including a 26-year-old Carlton man, a 25-year-old Preston man, a 25-year-old Glenroy man and a 22-year-old Meadow Heights man.

All those arrested are Australian citizens of Somali and Lebanese descent. The Glenroy man has been charged with conspiring to commit a terrorist act. Police allege they were motivated by ongoing conflict in Somalia and had planned to carry out an attack on army barracks in Sydney.

More than half of Victoria’s Somali refugee settlers who have arrived in the past decade call Moonee Valley home, according to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship’s settlement database.

The municipality is also home to many other African migrants.

Dr Ahmed, who is chairman of the African Think Tank, said people must remember the men arrested should be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

“The court has to prove that and the media has to be careful in not polarising the mainstream Australian society against the Somali community,” he said. “We need to make them welcome so we understand each other and more harmony is created.”

Moonee Valley police have injected significant resources and developed a number of programs in recent years to build bridges with Horn of African community groups and youths living in the Flemington and Kensington high-rise flats.

Programs have included youth mentoring, homework clubs and trips to Kokoda in Papua New Guinea, which have been instrumental in establishing better relations between police and the diverse population of Moonee Valley’s south.

Dr Ahmed, Victoria’s Australian of the Year recipient in 2009, said all that effort “could go down the drain”.

“The current media bashing of particularly Somali and generally [people] of Muslim background destroys the trust we built and the work we did. [There] needs to be double effort now to regain the status we originally built.”

Dr Ahmed said there was a perception that Somali refugees had brought their problems with them. He feared a backlash from the wider community, particularly aimed at Somali youths.

“Somali [people] will not attack, definitely. They will be attacked because they are seen as bad … my main worry is school kids.” He also believed it would now be difficult for Somali people to help bring relatives to Australia for a better life. “Also it will make it hard for Somalians to travel to their homeland because of the suspicion that is created now.”

AGAINST TERRORISM

A WESTERN suburbs Somali community leader says the arrests of a group of Somali-born Australians in counter-terrorism raids in Melbourne’s outer suburbs last week will reflect badly on Melbourne’s Somali community, which numbers between 4000 and 5000 in Footscray, Sunshine and Braybrook.

The president of the Flemington-based Somali Community of Victoria, Abdurahman Osman, said the community was against terrorism.

“It’s not good for our community. “Our name will be in a bad way and anyone who is doing a terrorist act is damaging our reputation.”