Heshu Yones Wiki
Heshu Yones Biography
Heshu was 16 when his strict Kurdish Muslim father, Abdalla Yones, slit his throat at his family’s home in Acton, west London, in October 2002.
Yones, a political refugee who had fled the brutality of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, believed that her daughter had become “too westernized” and was ashamed to learn that she had entered into a relationship with a young Lebanese Christian 18 years.
In the BBC Life Chances podcast series, journalist and former partner Athar Ahmad explores how Heshu’s sense of freedom and self-expression was fostered by her school, Acton High, but that this very sense of herself eventually led to her. to the murder of her.
Heshu Yones was 16 when she had her throat slit by her strict Kurdish Muslim father, Abdalla Yones at their family home in Acton, west London, in October 2002
Over the course of five episodes, it also explores the brutal deaths of two other former classmates: Anton Hyman, who was shot and stabbed at the age of 17, and Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed, a terrorism suspect who was reportedly killed. by al-Shabaab after fleeing. the United Kingdom for Somalia.
Ahmad, a news reporter and documentary maker, started at Acton High in the late 1990s. Alumni recall that he had a reputation for being “tough,” that fights were common, and that teachers’ cars were “stolen.” and handed over to the gangs. ”
“Maybe you remember the rose garden in front of the school and there would be people waiting in the rose garden to start a fight, with bottles,” recalls former principal Lesley Hall in the first episode. “ And that was a horrible community faction thing. ”
But Acton High, which was converted to an academy in 2017 after being rated “ inadequate ” by Ofsted, was also a melting pot for students of different cultural, religious and ethnic backgrounds. For some, it was a “lifeline” and a place of escape.
“For some of my classmates, school was the only place where they had to mingle with people from different backgrounds, to experience a different way of life from home,” Ahmad explains.
“I have heard that one of the contradictions of the modern Briton is that it can be a society that demands integration but sometimes ends up fostering separation.