A tiny little boy with tiny blue shorts and a tiny red t-shirt. His body has been washed upon a beach in Turkey. A couple of meters away lies the body of his brother. Aylan was 3 and his brother Galip was 5. Together with their parents, Aylan and Galip were on an overcrowded dinghy filled with Syrian refugees fleeing the war war and violence for a better future.
Their journey towards a life in security did not last long. The boat capsized 30 minutes after it set off Bodrum in Turkey for the island of Kos in Greece.
All 16 passengers fell into the water. Aylan, Galip, their mother, two other boys aged 9 and 11, another boy of unknown age… a total of 13 people were drowned in the calm sea.
The pictures of the boy face down on the Turkish beach, the tiny boy cradled in the arms of the the Turkish gendarme has shocked the world. And Europe. And the hypocrites. And the bureaucrats in EU in charge, like the European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management.
I am distraught. We have a collective responsibility 2 do everything in our power not 2 see these tragic images again http://ind.pn/1PLyEFV
Stylianides got the right comment, right away
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@StylianidesEU You’re one of the people in charge. Get. To. Work. Talk is cheap.#refugees
The picture shocked even those who were complaining that refugees disturbed the summer vacations of tourists. Daily Mail May 28/2015: Refugees “ruin” Briton’s holidays, turning Kos into “disgusting hellhole”.
Daily Mail September 2/2015: Tragedy of the tiny boys who symbolise the desperation of thousands
If these images of a dead child washed up on a beach don’t change Europe’s attitude to refugees, what will? http://ind.pn/1NN8QLO
More than 3,000 people have lost their lives in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea trying to flee the horror and the violence in the Middle East.
How many more children, how many more women and men have to be drown before Europe takes serious action?
Czech police remove migrants from trains, mark their forearms with numbers
Creepy. This picture revives ghosts of the past…
It is heart-wrenching to see dead children. These are no exception, and worse in the sense that their deaths are due solely to Europe’s refusal to aid refugees from war zones. Even when they risk their lives by sea, many with money to pay for food, travel and even rooms, Europe erects barbed wire fences to keep humanity at bay.
We are a sick continent.
Its the polticians that are sick, many of them anyhow.
I can see a lot of regular people willing to step up to help refugees.
May be they are too busy to recognize how they get manipulated. Not even one journalist counts things together, reports the real numbers of refugees on Greek islands of whom hundreds to thousands get rescued daily by Greek coast-guards in cooperation with their Turkish colleagues or that the Greek government is not allowed to ship the refugees from the islands directly to Kavalla or Salonika to shorten their trail of tears. Also the reason why it’s so many right now is hidden: First the ferry-boat-companies had only one vessel that was not busy with normal travel. So instead of calling the army they wait for the end of the season to bring the refugees from the islands to Pireas but if the army would have brought them directly to FYROM border there would have been already much more dead refugees in Germany, Austria and Hungary because it was too hot.
This is a terribly tragedy, but let’s not overlook the parents complicity in all this. The fled the war in Syria last year and have been living safely in Turkey since then. They wanted to travel to Canada, where they have relatives, and they’re visas were denied. At this point these economic migrants, decide to leave the safety they have in Turkey, because they WANT to be somewhere else. THEY decided to break the law and be smuggled into Europe. THEY put their children on an overcrowded, unsafe rubber boat, WITHOUT LIFE VESTS, placing the safety of THEIR children in the hands of criminals, because they WANTED to leave Turkey, they were no longer fleeing the dangers of the war in Syria.
do you believe they had a life in Turkey?
No, they did not have refugee status in Turkey. You are posting lies here. They remained entitled to humanitarian protection, and died trying to reach safety. Many Syrians have stated that they were treated badly in Turkey.
The other lie that you have posted is that the parents did such and such. No, the smugglers organised the voyage to Greece and did not provide anyone with life vests. They put their lives in the hands of smugglers because Europe refuses to accept refugees unless they arrive as asylum seekers. Those lives were lost because European politicians and ignorant members of the public do not support the rights of refugees, as laid down in international and European law.
Basically, Europe is killing innocent people — and racist thugs post online comments supporting the policy.
What comes next? Refugees must do swimming courses?
The life-vests they had the traffickers forced them to take off, so to get even more people boarded, their Canadian relatives had to send lots of money to pay greedy landlords in Turkey and this might be another crazy reason for this ugly “boat” that for people who can swim it might look like if an air-mattress to paddle on looks safer but rushing the shores, diving away from police control into the water at night? C’mon!
I’m sorry, I don’t understand why it is Europe’s fault.
The family was in Turkey, maybe not the place they would have chosen but a safe country. The father decided he wanted a better life, as we all would given the opportunity, but instead of putting all his efforts into doing this legally he tried to jump the queue and put the lives of his wife and two small children into the hands of an illegal smuggler and an unsafe boat to make a dangerous sea crossing.
Certainly it’s a tragedy but is it our fault?
He was not seeking asylum, he was an illegal economic migrant.
his legally initiated request to go to relatives to Canada was rejected
Turkish authorities refused to give them visa that Canaduh asked for
Canada’s department of citizenship and immigration confirmed that there was no record of an application for Abdullah Kurdi and his family.
From this:-http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34143445
So it was the Turkish Authorities who wouldn’t forward the visa request?
yes
Just like Syrian refugees get ripped off in Egypt Turkey is not a nice place for Kurdish. Following the European ideals seriously the criminalization of the PKK must stop, Apo Öcalan and thousands of other Kurdish and political prisoners get released. A strong Kurdish state will stabilize the whole region and it could also be multi-ethnic as the actual Kurdish struggles indicate and it would also give perspective to others.
Russian and Ukrainian nationalist idiots should unite and go fight ISIL as the European soldiers, well paid by taxpayers, don’t do their job, the only thing they achieve is more power to ISIL as sending bombers against troops is only done by cowards.