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| Europe |
| As children die reaching for Europe's shores, empathy fades |
| 2016-02-06 |
| [ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Five months ago, a 3-year-old Syrian boy's corpse on a Turkish beach galvanized public action for refugees. Now, strikingly similar images are generating little more than a collective shrug. It's partly about timing, circumstance and the exceptional power of last September's photos of Aylan Kurdi. But it's also because sensitivities are growing dull. Boats arrive on Europe's shores daily, or sink on the way -- like the one that capsized off ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... 's coast on Saturday, killing at least 37 people including babies and other young children. Images from the latest tragedy, including the bodies of children, failed to generate the same level of shock. Fears -- that refugees will stage bad boy attacks or molest women -- threaten to displace compassion. And Europe has yet to find the magic solution to its migrant dilemma. "The public seems to be kind of immunized. They don't want to see it anymore," said Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Some are rebelling against the numbness. Greek soccer players held a sit-in solidarity protest after the latest refugee drownings. Artist Ai Weiwei, wanting kinder migrant policies, re-enacted Aylan's death. The photos of Aylan weren't the first or last to document the fatal risk that families take to flee Syria's war for something better in Europe. But his lifeless, tidily-dressed body -- first face-down on the sand, later in the arms of a police officer -- captured the collective imagination like no other. In an era when images are ubiquitous and fleeting, it stood out. Unusually, he was quickly identified and found to have relatives in Canada, which helped his story go global. "People react very strongly to individual stories," Fleming said. "It was a single boy on the beach, looking like my son, my little brother, in a sleeping position." |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #3 What, nobody interested in the number 6 dance tonight? |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2016-02-06 17:08 |
| #2 The body bags back from Somalia reduced the 'virtue flashing' among the TV viewers back home too. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2016-02-06 09:27 |
| #1 Maybe, if the "children" who reached European shores, refrained from behaving like beasts... |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2016-02-06 04:22 |