LONDON — The harrowing revelation by Mo Farahthe Olympic track star, who was trafficked to Britain as a young child, has found wide resonance in his adopted country, where immigration remains a thorny issue and candidates vying to replace Prime Minister Boris Johnson have championed government policy to give people asylum to grant seekers on planes to Rwanda.
Experts said they hoped Mr Farah’s stark personal story would humanize the complex challenges facing migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, and divert the debate from what the government’s determined focus has been on reducing numbers. people crossing the English Channel to Great Britain.
While immigration experts said they did not expect Mr Farah’s case to change wider policy in a Britain ruled by the Conservative Party, it could raise public awareness of the evils of human trafficking, particularly of children.
Mr Farah’s vivid memories – of being transported as a 9-year-old Somali to Britain under an assumed name, of forced servitude to a family and of his rescue by a school gym teacher who helped him care for the mother of a friend – stunned Britons, who thought they knew one of their great sportsmen.
“This is a very important story,” said Rob McNeil, the deputy director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford. “If you don’t create moments where the extraordinary shines a light on the ordinary, you risk a situation where the ordinary is kept out of people’s view.”
Mr McNeil said he doubted the deluge of reactions to Mr Farah’s story would affect the government. policy of transferring asylum seekers to Rwanda† Since the plan’s announcement in April, the government has made progress despite legal challenges and strong criticism from human rights activists.
Still several prominent candidates have reaffirmed their support for the relocation plan, which is popular with those who vote for the Conservative Party. One of the centrist candidates, Jeremy Hunt, said he would prefer to expand the list of countries hosting asylum seekers outside Rwanda.
“If we want to become a humane country that provides a safe haven for people who really need asylum,” Mr Hunt told Sky News, “we need to find legal safe routes for people to get here and not a crazy flight for people.” put their lives in the hands of people smugglers and try to cross the channel.”
Political leaders from all sides rushed to pay tribute to Mr Farah and testified to his lofty place in British sport. He is arguably the most successful long-distance runner in history and the first British track and field athlete to win four Olympic gold medals.
In 2017, Mr Farah was awarded a knighthood for his services to sports from Queen Elizabeth II. When he appeared at a concert for the Queen’s platinum jubilee last month, the audience gave him a thunderous applause.
“Everything that has survived Sir Mo proves that he is not only one of our greatest Olympians, but also a truly great Briton,” said Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London. said on Twitter†
For Nadhim Zahawi, the finance minister and a candidate for Conservative Party leader, Mr Farah’s story conveyed some elements of its own. He too came to Britain as a refugee and fled Saddam Hussein in Iraq at 11 a.m. with his family. But Mr Zahawi, who has championed the government’s Rwanda policies, was quick to highlight the differences between him and Mr Farah.
“I was very lucky to have my parents with me when we fled Iraq,” said Mr. Zahawi on the BBC’s morning programme. “I salute Mo Farah. What an amazing human being – to have been through that childhood trauma, and to get through it and be such an amazing role model is really inspiring.”
The full story of mr. Farah will be broadcast on Wednesday in a documentary produced by the BBC and Red Bull Studios. He declined a request for further comment through a spokeswoman.
In the documentary, Mr Farah expressed concern that he was endangering his British citizenship by sharing his story. But the UK Home Office said it had no intention of taking any action against him. Children are not complicit in fraud or misrepresentation by their parent or guardian. Government officials also said they did not expect to take any action against Alan Watkinson, the teacher who helped him obtain citizenship.
Encouraged to play sports by Mr Watkinson, Mr Farah won a gold medal in the 5,000m and 10,000m races at the 2012 London Games – the latter being an exciting culmination of what became known as ‘Super Saturday’, when Mr. Farah won one of six British gold medals in one day at home – and four years later repeated his feat in Rio de Janeiro.
Those achievements made Mr. Farah a household name, with his signature”mobotVictory celebrations can be seen in advertising campaigns for everything from broadband providers to meat substitutes.
Although the reputation of Mr. Farah was tainted by his connections to Alberto Salazar, disgraced coach to have found violate doping rules in 2019, his popularity proved resilient enough to embark on a reality TV career the following year.
For all the brutal details of his story, Mr Farah’s flight from Somalia bears some resemblance to that of many others.
After the war in Somalia broke out in 1991, many families fled, seeking refuge in neighboring countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia and later resettling in third countries. Some of those on the run also arrived in Western countries after a spouse or relative applied to sponsor them.
Sometimes families replaced one relative with another for various reasons, including the fact that the original person in the application may have died in the war. That meant that a child’s name and place of birth would be changed and the exact relationship to that family member would remain hidden.
For children who got into this web, many would go and live in a new country with men and women they didn’t really know or were distantly related to – opening the door to abuse and exploitation.
“This is pretty shocking,” says Nadifa Mohamed, whose first novel “Black Mamba Boywas based on her father’s story of hardship and survival before arriving in Britain, said in a telephone interview. “It’s just shocking that he has so much fame under a name imposed on him by these truly appalling circumstances.”
Ayan Mahamoud, Somaliland’s former representative in Britain, said Mr. Farah was “brave” to speak candidly about his past, especially in light of how his so-called family repeatedly… went to the tabloids to belittle him for having lost touch with them after he became famous. His revelations, she said, should strengthen conversations about the impact of human trafficking on children and how to care for them.
“I am so proud that Mo had the courage to speak up and tell his story,” Ms Mahamoud said in a telephone interview from Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, a escape region in northwestern Somalia. “They took him to a hell house, but he was able to overcome it and become a free man.”
Trafficking in human beings remains widespread in the Horn of Africa, according to the International Organization for Migration, with women and children crossing borders for domestic work, sexual exploitation and forced begging.
Somaliland, where Mr Farah is from, has been identified as a particular region of origin and transit for international human trafficking to countries such as Djibouti, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
For now, some refugee experts said, the focus should be on Mr Farah’s courage to come forward rather than on the potential impact his story could have on the UK immigration debate or the future of his policies.
“It’s a very personal revelation and it’s great that he felt brave enough to do this,” said Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International’s refugee and migrant rights program director. “The very first thing people should do is respect him and his story.”
Mark Landler reported from London and Abdi Latif Dahiru from Nairobi, Kenya. Rory Smith contributed reporting from Manchester, England and Tariq Panja from London