Kurdi tragedy ‘has not halted xenophobia’

The harrowing image of the dead body of three -year- old Syrian boy Alan Kurdi washed upon the shore soft he Mediterranean in 2015 has not stopped a backlash against migration, despite the worldwide outrage it provoked at the time, a former Moderator told the General Assembly.

The Very Rev Dr John Chalmers, convener of the World Mission Council, told commissioners–delegates to the General Assembly – “I sometimes despair of the populist message and mind set which is influencing so many nations to focus inwards on themselves, believing that greatness or success go hand in hand with closing your doors to the migrant and the stranger – have you any idea of the scale of the surge of displaced humanity across the world?

“People who are fleeing from fa mine caused by climate change, wars forgotten by the rest of the world, natural disasters which seem to a have force greater than ever before, religious extremism which many of us thought was a thing of the past – people are fleeing because there is international indifference to their situations.”

Dr Ch al mers added :“A pernicious xenophobia has crept into the culture in too many of our developed nations and here, it seems to me, that there has to be some clarity of voice from the churches – who else will speak for the poor and the persecuted if we do not?”