The picture that made Europe think again

IT was the picture that prompted a thousand new questions about the unfolding migrant tragedy gripping Europe. The image of threeyear-old Syrian boy, Aylan Kurdi, lying face down, drowned in the surf at the Turkish coastal resort of Bodrum, brought home the full horror of what is said to be the biggest human migration to Europe since World War 2. As illustrated on our pages today, it takes its place among the other turning-point pictures in world history, among them the mushroom cloud that was the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945, which heralded the age of nuclear destruction, and, locally, the body of Hector Pieterson being carried in Soweto in 1976, which marked the start of the end of white rule in South Africa.

What the Aylan picture did was bring into people’s living rooms the tragedy that is now unfolding on their doorstep and, possibly, prompting them to ask searching questions of their governments. For too long, the governments of powerful states have been able to implement their questionable agendas in faraway places with scant regard for the suffering of local citizens.

This has been the case in, to mention but a few examples, Iraq, where the US fought a war to “bring democracy” in its search for nonexistent weapons of mass destruction; in Ukraine, where Vladimir Putin’s proxy forces are waging a civil war that has already seen Crimea annexed; and in Libya, where the UN sanctioned a strategy to rid the country of Muammar Gaddafi and usher in a new era of war and misery.

Now, as tens of thousands of Syrians and Libyans head for Europe, the EU is facing tough questions of itself and of its values, born of the era of European reconciliation in the aftermath of the cataclysm of the last world war. Does Europe abandon its values now that it is being asked to give practical expression to what it putatively believes in? Already, the rise of right-wing parties reflects a growing tide of anti-refugee sentiment and a fear, valid or not, that Europe could be “swamped” with migrants.

Perhaps little Aylan’s death will not have been in vain if it galvanises the powers into realising, at last, that the world is one place, with one common destiny. Movement of people is as old as history: how else would the US have come into being?

Longer term, the source of the exodus, war in Syria and upheaval in the Middle East, must not be left to fester. For today, however, Europe dare not let others suffer the fate that Aylan did. Such is the price of being called a civilised power.