WHY are CHILDREN still DROWNING?
NINE MONTHS AFTER ALAN KURDI’S LIFELESS BODY PRICKED THE WORLD’S CONSCIENCE, HIS FATHER SAYS HIS SON DIED IN VAIN
• The father of a three- yearold Syrian boy who became a tragic emblem of Europe’s migration crisis when his body washed up on a Turkish beach last year says his son died for nothing because refugees are still drowning.
Last week, about 700 migrants, included an estimated 40 children, died as three smugglers’ boats sank in the Mediterranean.
The migrant crisis was pushed to the front of the world’s conscience last September when a picture of Alan Kurdi’s tiny body near the tourist resort of Bodrum underlined the risks that hundreds of thousands of Syrians, Iraqis and others were taking as they tried to reach the Greek islands from the Turkish coast.
That route has now all but closed as a result of an European Union accord with Turkey to stop the boats from making the perilous crossing, but tens of thousands of migrants are still try- ing to reach Europe from the coast of North Africa.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees warned Monday that the crossings were likely to increase along with a dramatic rise in loss of life. “This is a global crisis and everybody needs to intervene,” a spokesman said.
Alan’s father, Abdullah, who also lost his eldest son, Ghalib, 5, and his wife, Rehenna, when their rubber dinghy sank, said he thought initially that Alan’s death was sending a strong message.
“For a while it seemed that the photograph of Alan had succeeded in affecting public opinion in the West and in the attitudes of politicians. Schools and campaigns were named after my son and I liked that because I thought it would increase empathy and mean that my family was not forgotten,” he told La Repubblica newspaper.
“But the news of more boat sinkings and of walls being built along the Balkan route tells me that, in reality, beyond the initial emotional reaction, little has changed.”
As many as 550 people on a rickety fishing boat were among the 700 migrants who perished in the Mediterranean Sea over three days last week. Two Eritreans who survived the crossing and arrived in Sicily said sea water kept seeping into the smugglers’ boat despite all efforts to bail it out.
It was the cries of children — and the moment they decided they must save themselves — that haunt the survivors.
“When the morning came, I saw how the children were crying and the women,” Habtom Tekle, a 27- year- old Eritrean, said through an interpreter. “At this point I only tried to pray. Everybody was trying to take the water out of the boat.”
The wooden boat was without an engine and was being towed by another smugglers’ boat laden with hundreds of other migrants, signalling the increasing desperation of the smugglers. Once the second boat started sinking last Thursday, the commander on the first boat ordered the tow line cut, apparently to keep his boat from sinking as well, according to Italian police interviews of survivors.
Most of the people on board were Eritrean, according to Save the Children, including many women and children.
One of the survivors included a four- year- old girl whose mother had been killed in a traffic accident in Libya just days before embarking, said Giovanna Di Benedetto, a Save the Children spokeswoman in Italy.