Images of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi have done the media rounds. He became the face of the refugee tragedy and showed how easily the dream of a new and better life could turn to tragedy. A picture on its own tells a thousand words, but here are some stories behind THAT photo.
The father
A tragic figure, Abdullah Kurdi lost his wife, and two sons, Aylan and Ghalib, on the fateful crossing from Turkey to the Greek island of Kos. The sea was so fierce that it overturned the plastic dinghy they were traveling in. “I took my wife and kids in my arms and I realised they were all dead,” he says. Left with nothing more to hope for, he now plans to return to Syria.
The aunt
Tima Kurdi, a permanent resident of Vancouver in Canada, had given her brother the money needed to travel across the Aegean to Kos in the hope that he would get the required papers to travel to Canada. She revealed that her sister-in-law Rehan Kurdi feared the journey as she did not know how to swim and neither did the two children.
Canada
Canada could not accept the family’s application due to hitches in Turkey. Turkish officials’ refusal to give the family a visa resulted in their decision to head to Greece. Amid mounting anger, Canada’s Immigration Minister Chris Alexander has now suspended his re-election campaign to investigate why the refugee application was rejected.
The photographer
Nilufer Demir – a photographer for Turkey’s Dogan News Agency – was crossing a tourist beach in Bodrum, Turkey, on Wednesday when she saw the toddler lying face down in the sand. Waves lapped at his face and there was nothing left to do as he was already dead. So she raised her camera and began shooting. “I thought, ‘This is the only way I can express the scream of his silent body,'” she later told CNN.
The images
The images of Aylan’s lifeless body, face down in the sand after being swept onto the beach as though it was debris, has become the human face of the EU migrant tragedy. It has gone viral and has prompted a series of artworks showing that it is well on its way to becoming an icon of the times.
The inspiration for more artwork
Artists around the world respond to the image…
The little body has become the elephant in the room…
Leaders just idly look on…
Or maybe he is just an ordinary boy being laid to sleep at night…
Here’s what he should have been doing…
An anonymous death notice in Friday morning’s Sydney Morning Herald, Australia…
Greek Orthodox priest Efstratios Dimou or Papa Stratism who created the charity Aggalia (Embrace) to provide refugees with food and clothing passed away on Wednesday after slipping into a coma. His death coincides as the body of Syrian toddler was washed up on a Turkish tourist beach and went viral around the world. An artist paid homage to the Greek Orthodox priest with an image of him walking with Aylan’s body.
A flying angel…
