Why I shared a horrific photo of a drowned Syrian child
Peter Bouckaert/Al Arabiya/September 04/15
I thought long and hard before I retweeted the photo of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi. It shows the lifeless toddler, lying face down on a popular Turkish beach, one of eleven Syrians who have almost certainly died as they tried to reach safety in Europe by boarding a smuggler’s boat. Instead they ended up as the latest victims of Europe’s paltry response in the face of a growing crisis. What struck me the most were his little sneakers, certainly lovingly put on by his parents that morning as they dressed him for their dangerous journey. One of my favorite moments of the morning is dressing my kids and helping them put on their shoes.
They always seem to manage to put something on backwards, to our mutual amusement. Staring at the image, I couldn’t help imagine that it was one of my own sons lying there drowned on the beach. I am currently in Hungary, documenting the journeys of Syrian refugees, the very journey that today took another young life. It’s easy to blame the parents for exposing their son to such deadly danger, but only if you forget the barrel bombs and Islamic State (also known as ISIS) beheadings that they are fleeing. All morning yesterday at the Serbian-Hungarian border, I saw Syrian parents determinedly walking with their children – trying to remove them from the horrors of the slaughter in Syria, which have been allowed to continue for four years, and to the promise of security in Europe. Those parents are heroes; I admire their sheer determination to bring their children to a better life.
Notebooks full of tragedy
Sadly, all along the journey, they are faced with hurdles and hostility. Some smugglers are so organized they even give receipts for their criminal business, but they care little for the lives of those they transport and make fortunes from. Their brutality may be expected, but what is inexcusable is the indifference and obstacles placed in their path by Europe’s leaders. Almost every Syrian I have interviewed has had a close brush with death on their journey, often involving sinking boats.
Almost every Syrian I have interviewed has had a close brush with death on their journey, often involving sinking boats. Now, in Hungary, they find their path blocked again, with thousands made to sleep in the streets without any help from the Hungarian authorities. My notebooks are full of tragedy. Ali Pintar, a Syrian Kurd, fled with his three children after ISIS tried to take control of his hometown of Qamishli by sending suicide car bombs into the town. He has his train tickets to Munich, but police are preventing him from even entering the train station, so he has been sleeping rough for the last three nights with his children. He is utterly dejected, telling me of the humiliation he has faced: “It would have been better to stay in Syria. There, you only die once when there is an explosion or something. Here, I feel like I die a thousand deaths each day.”
Some say the picture is too offensive to share online or print in our newspapers. But what I find offensive is that drowned children are washing up on our shorelines, when more could have been done to prevent their deaths.
It was not an easy decision to share a brutal image of a drowned child. But I care about these children as much as my own. Maybe if Europe’s leaders did too, they would try to stem this ghastly spectacle.
Father Buries Drowned Syrian Boy as Europe Wrangles over Refugees
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/September 04/15/The father of a drowned Syrian toddler whose fate shocked the world returned home Friday to bury his family as European ministers tried to thrash out differences on binding refugee quotas to ease the crisis.
Britain said it would take thousands more from refugee camps on the Syrian border as the heartbreaking images of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi’s lifeless body on a Turkish beach ramped up pressure on political leaders to act.
His father Abdullah Kurdi — who has told how Aylan and his other young son Ghaleb “slipped through my hands” when their boat sank in the Aegean Sea — arrived in the Syrian flashpoint border town of Kobane with the funeral caskets of his sons and wife, who also died.
“As a father who lost his children, I want nothing for myself from this world. All I want is that this tragedy in Syria immediately ends,” he said on his way to Kobane, which was devastated in clashes between Islamic State militants and Kurdish fighters. A divided Europe faces growing international criticism over its response to Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War II, during which more than 350,00 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean, and around 2,600 people have died. U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres warned that the EU faced a “defining moment” after little Aylan’s death and called for the mandatory resettlement of 200,000 refugees by EU states. With tensions growing, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande said Thursday they had agreed the EU should now require member states to take in a fixed number of migrants. EU foreign ministers were to meet later in Luxembourg to discuss the crisis, which has split the bloc between countries like Germany advocating greater solidarity and mainly eastern nations such as Hungary that have taken a hardline approach. Under-fire British Prime Minister David Cameron, whose country has been accused of failing to help shoulder the burden, said he would set out plans next week for his country to take “thousands more” refugees. “I can announce that we will do more, providing resettlement for thousands more Syrian refugees,” Cameron said in Lisbon.
However he insisted that Britain would take refugees direct from camps on the border with Syria and not those already in other EU member states, saying that would just encourage more people to make the journey to Europe. Disagreements are rife over Europe’s piecemeal migration system and its passport-free Schengen area. EU rules that asylum claims must be dealt with in the country they first arrive were thrown into turmoil by Germany, which said it will refrain from deporting Syrians. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has proposed quotas for resettling a total of 160,000 refugees across the EU to take the pressure off the overstretched frontline states of Greece, Italy and Hungary. In Budapest, a tense standoff continued between police and hundreds of refugees blocked by police from carrying on their train journey west towards Germany, Europe’s main destination. On Thursday, the police allowed the refugees board a train in Budapest bound for the Austrian border. But their journey ended just west of the capital in Bicske, where police tried to disembark them and take them to a refugee processing camp. An estimated 200 to 300 people, angry at what they saw as Hungary’s trickery, refused to get off the train, where they spent the night. The European tensions erupted into the open on Thursday when Hungary’s right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban lashed out at Germany, the EU’s biggest economy, for aggravating the crisis.
Orban, whose government has built a fence on the border with Serbia to keep out migrants, also sparked anger by warning that Europe’s Christian roots were at risk and saying Hungary did not want Muslim migrants. The human cost of the migrant crisis has been brought into sharp focus by Aylan’s drowning, and the images of the child’s lifeless body, in a t-shirt, shorts and shoes, lying on the beach. His father Abdullah has told of the horrific moments when the family of four was tipped into the Mediterranean off Turkey’s coast. Reports said the family were trying to get to Canada but Ottawa denied it had received an asylum request from the boy’s family. The picture sent shock waves across social media and prompted a furious reaction from, among others, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who accused European leaders of turning the Mediterranean into a “cemetery”. Turkey is host to 1.8 million refugees from the conflict in neighboring Syria.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, a long standing ally of Syrian leader Bashar Assad, said Europe’s migrant crisis was an “absolutely expected” result of the West’s policies in the Middle East and that he had personally warned of the consequences. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott meanwhile said the images of Aylan showed the need to stop the “evil trade” of people smuggling boats, defending Canberrra’s own hardline immigration policies. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said the bloc’s new naval mission could step up action against people smugglers in the Mediterranean within weeks, seizing and destroying their boats.
Drowned Syrian boys buried in hometown they fled
By Associated Press | Kucuk Kendirli, Turkey/September 04/15/The Syrian father who had survived a capsizing during a desperate voyage from Turkey to Greece has taken the bodies of his wife and two sons back to the Syrian Kurdish region they had fled from, to bury them in their hometown of Kobane, and they were buried Friday in their hometown of Kobani, returning to the conflict-torn Syrian Kurdish region they had fled. With the burial of his family, Abdullah Kurdi abandoned any thought of leaving his homeland again. “He only wanted to go to Europe for the sake of his children,” said Suleiman Kurdi, an uncle of the grieving father. “Now that they’re dead, he wants to stay here in Kobani next to them.” The bodies of the mother and the two boys were flown to a city near Turkey’s border with Syria, from where police-protected funeral vehicles made their way to the border town of Suruc and crossed into Kobani. Legislators from Turkey accompanied Abdullah Kurdi to Kobani. Journalists and well-wishers were stopped at a checkpoint some 3 kilometers (2 miles) from the border. Scores of casually dressed mourners clustered around as the bodies were laid in the dry, bare earth of the Martyrs Cemetery. Clouds of dust rose as dirt was shoveled over the graves. Some graves in the cemetery were haphazardly marked out with borders of concrete blocks. The haunting image of the man’s 3-year-old son, Aylan Kurdi, washed up on Turkish beach focused the world’s attention on the wave of migration fueled by war and deprivation. Legislators from Turkey accompanied Abdullah Kurdi to Kobane. Journalists and well-wishers were stopped at a check-point some 3 kms from the border. Aylan drowned along with his 5-year-old brother Galip and his mother, Rehan while trying to reach the island of Kos.
