Powerful images should shock the world into real change
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The Real Mackay by Dan Mackay
How easily do we forget? It’s as if it never registered in the first instance. So much so that as the harrowing scenes continue to unfold we feel a renewed sense of outrage at the loss of human life we have so easily come to disregard.
Let us then, to our eternal shame, remember the death of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year old Syrian boy whose body was found, face down, washed up on a beach near the Turkish resort of Bodrum in September 2015.
He had drowned along with at least 12 other Syrians on that fateful day, including his mother and an older brother, trying to make their bid to freedom on the Greek island on Lesbos. Around 15,000 others had fled there leading to a refugee crisis and, later, allegations of arson attacks on the very people who had lost everything and whose sparse belongings would be denied them.
You may remember, too, how European governments – including that of then Prime Minister David Cameron – had decided to withdraw search and rescue operations in the Med as some sort of perverted deterrent to warn off those desperately fleeing persecution and a new life in the West.
The iconic image of poor Aylan’s body had seemed a turning point shocking the world to the reality of the refugee crisis. In just the same way as the emblematic photo of a nine-year-old Vietnamese girl running naked, her burnt skin peeling off her traumatised body following a Napalm attack, led to a watershed moment and American withdrawal from that long and abortive war.
It had seemed then that photographic images could shock the world to the reality of horror – and shame politicians to act with greater compassion and humanity. But how easily we forget.
The English Channel has now become the latest battleground. Recently 27 people, among them three children, seven women and a pregnant mother-to-be, lost their lives in what was the biggest single loss of life in a channel crossing, so far.
Politicians on both sides of ‘la Manche’ expressed sadness and regret. There was also an outpouring of toxic bile on social media platforms, not all of it compassionate.
In the immediate aftermath, the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, somehow managed to offend his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron. A hurriedly drawn summit to better co-ordinate efforts saw an invite to Home Secretary, Priti Patel, withdrawn as diplomatic relations soured.
Of course, we Brits have our own historical links with Dunkirk where many of the current migrants make their bid for freedom to these shores. Back in the summer of 1940 Winston Churchill oversaw a miracle flotilla evacuate more than 300,000 troops to safety.
But today Dunkerque is an altogether different place where asylum seekers, according to the European Court of Human Rights, face ‘inhumane and degrading living conditions’.
In this season of peace and goodwill we may momentarily recall a Nativity narrative of fleeing parents, their names were Joseph and Mary, seeking refuge to another safer land…
Sometimes it takes a poet like Marco Leoni with the right words –
If this was your son
you would fill the sea with ships of any flag.
But don't worry.
He is not your son.
You can sleep peacefully.
And above all of course,
He is not your son.
He is just a lost son of humanity,
Dirty mankind, that makes no noise.
He's not your son
