IMAGE OF A CRISIS
Boys shunned by Canada perish
It is an image that captures the human tragedy of the growing migrant emergency: a Turkish border guard tenderly cradling the lifeless body of a Syrian-Kurdish child, washed ashore on the beach of a holiday resort.
The bodies of the little boy, still dressed in bright red T-shirt and shorts, and his brother were found lying face-down in the surf on the beach near the resort town of Bodrum, 402 kilometres west of the city of Antalya on Turkey’s idyllic Turquoise Coast.
As photographs from the scene were cited around the world as crystallizing Europe’s worst migrant crisis since the Second World War, it emerged that Canada recently rejected a refugee application on behalf of the two boys and their parents, according to family.
The two drowned boys were fouryear-old Aylan Kurdi and his twoyear-old brother Galip — sons of a family trying desperately to get to Canada.
The Syrian-Kurds from Kobane died along with their mother Rehan and eight other refugees early Wednesday. The father of the two boys, Abdullah, survived.
The father’s family says his only wish now is to return to Kobane with his dead wife and children, bury them, and be buried alongside them.
“I heard the news at five o’clock in this morning,” Teema Kurdi, Abdullah’s sister, said Wednesday.
She learned of the drowning through a telephone call to Ghuson Kurdi, the wife of another brother, Mohammad. “She had got a call from Abdullah, and all he said was, my wife and two boys are dead.”
Teema, a Vancouver hairdresser who emigrated to Canada more than 20 years ago, said Abdullah and Rehan Kurdi and their two boys were the subject of a privately sponsored refugee application that Canada’s Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration rejected in June, owing to the complexities involved in refugee applications from Turkey.
Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander could not be reached for comment, but New Westminster-Coquitlam NDP MP Fin Donnelly said he’d handdelivered the Kurdis’ file to Alexander earlier this year.
Alexander said he’d look into it, Donnelly said, but the Kurdis’ application was rejected in June.
“This is horrific and heartbreaking news,” Donnelly said.
The family had two strikes against it — like thousands of other Syrian-Kurdish refugees in Turkey, the United Nations would not register them as refugees, and the Turkish government would not grant them exit visas.
Canada and Turkey have long been at loggerheads over the bottleneck blocking Syrian refugees in Turkey from finding their way to Canada. It is not uncommon for Kurds in Syria to be arbitrarily denied passports, and to have great difficulty registering as refugees with the UNHCR.
The revelation about Canada’s role in the boys’ deaths is likely to raise fresh questions about Canada’s response to the growing humanitarian crisis, and underscores the way the crisis is spilling across borders and confronting illprepared international leaders.
The escalating humanitarian catastrophe has forced European policy-makers to call an emergency summit for Sept. 14 at which European Union leaders are expected to push for a more coordinated effort by the 28 EU member states.
The plans are expected to include a new system for distributing refugees more equitably across the continent, as well as rules for determining which migrants should be returned to their home countries.
The principle of free movement across continental Europe is at particular risk. The abolition of border controls between EU nations has been a central pillar of European leaders’ dreams of stitching together a continent of common values and interconnected economies. But in just weeks, the migration crisis has begun to erode a system that took decades to build.
The Hungarian government didn’t explain why it permitted more than 1,000 migrants to leave Budapest by train Monday, but stopped the practice Tuesday and Wednesday, dashing the hopes of thousands who had bought train tickets.
Migrants “are not entitled to move freely within the European Union even after entering Hungary,” government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said.
The asylum-seekers, many of whom are fleeing conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, hope to make it to Germany, which has promised shelter and sustenance for Syrians.
She had got a call from Abdullah, and all he said was, my wife and two boys are dead. TEEMA KURDI