JUST LIKE THEM, I RISKED MY LIFE IN SEA CROSSING
■ Greetings from Bonn, Germany. When I saw the front page on Thursday about the Kurdish-Iranian family who died trying to cross the Channel to Britain, I took a deep breath and immediately my journey across the Mediterranean Sea from the city of Afrin, Syria, to Germany came to mind.
I left Afrin for not joining any military group. I was a teacher and fighting only with pens and books to teach children how to read and write. And suddenly I became a refugee and I had to find a new home.
After a long journey from Turkey to Algeria and Libya, across the Mediterranean to Italy and France, I found my shelter on July 7, 2014, in Bonn. After six years I became a social worker after studying for three years.
I was granted German citizenship and became an EU citizen – no longer a refugee and a father to a lovely daughter. I made it, whereas this lovely family did not. And there are hundreds of thousands trying every day to find a new home like me when I was escaping from the Syrian civil war six years ago.
These people are not numbers, they are human beings and deserve a better chance and a better life. So, to Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Ursula von der Leyen – when will your silence end and when will you do something to save these innocent people from dying?
Nidal Rashow, via email
■ These desperate people paid people smugglers their life savings of £21,600 to make the crossing. We need to catch these criminals. I don’t agree that they should pass through lots of safe countries to get to the UK but if these
evil criminals didn’t exist, this poor family would not have lost their lives in such horrific circumstances – £21,600 to drown is very, very sad.
Peter Moll, Hertford
■ Yes, the criminal gangs are to blame for preying on the vulnerable, but the French authorities are as much to blame for turning a blind eye and doing nothing to stop these crossings.
Roger, Wolverhampton
■ John from Oxfordshire uses very eloquent words to essentially declare that the migrant crisis is France’s problem, not Britain’s (MetroTalk, Fri). Given how relatively few refugees we have accepted compared to our European neighbours, I think we should be doing more, not boomeranging the problem back to Calais.
Greg, Kent