There
are some images that have seared their way into the collective consciousness of
humanity. Most are traumatic. In my lifetime the screaming face of a naked
young girl – Kim Phuc – badly burned from a napalm attack, running down a road,
as US troops in Vietnam looked on, is one. Fr. Edward Daly frantically waving a
blood stained handerchief as a group of frightened men pass British soldiers carrying
the body of another who was shot during the British Paras assault in Derry on
Bloody Sunday is another.
Soweto
in 1976 and school children taking on the military might of the apartheid south
African regime. Four little babies, in blood splattered white shrouds, lying in
an ice-cream freezer in Gaza last summer. The rubble of the Shankill as dust
covered men and women desperately scramble through rubble trying to find
survivors.
We
each have our own memories of these and other events. Where we were when we saw
them. The emotional jolt. The sadness, the shock, mixed with anger, which often
turned to outrage.
Sometimes
the image lifts the spirit. Rekindles our belief in humanity. Whether it was
ordinary citizens taking hammers and sledge hammers to the Berlin Wall or the
release of Nelson Mandela.
But
most frequently the image is violent and distressing. Despite this the public
and personal reaction is often shortlived as the next shocking image or piece
of film, of the next atrocity, emerges onto our television screens or
newspapers. They rarely have a lasting political impact. The image comes and
goes. It remains in our memories. But the media move on to the next event and
the political leaders and governments, having expressed their condemnation, put
it behind them.
But
there are exceptions. The harrowing and distressing photo last week of three
year old Aylan Kurdi lying on a beach in Turkey is one of these. How many times
have you walked into a bedroom and looked into a cot, or onto a bed, and watched
your son or daughter or grandchild lying peacefully asleep with their face
pressed into the mattress and backside sticking up defiantly?
But
Aylan was not asleep. His death was not peaceful. He had died with his five
year old brother Galip and mother Rihan and seven other refugees trying to
cross the five dangerous miles from Turkey – which is outside the EU –to the
Greek island of Kos which is inside the EU.
Like
so many other instances we have heard of in recent months the boat was too
flimsy and the sea too rough.
In
April as many as 700 men, women and children died when a boat carrying refugees
sank about 60 miles off the coast of Libya. In response to this disaster and
other incidents in which boats sank and people drowned the EU increased its
naval presence in the region. The Irish government dispatched the Lé Eithne in
May. During its tour of duty it saved thousands. Lieutenant
Commander Eric Timon said: "The
numbers of people fleeing Africa for whatever reason... casting themselves
adrift on unseaworthy vessels in the hope of rescue or the hope of reaching
European shores, it's quite extraordinary.”
The Lé
Eithne was replaced by Lé Niamh. Together they have rescued an astounding five
and a half thousand people. Lé Samuel Beckett will shortly take over this
essential humanitarian work. If the Irish boats hadn’t been there all of those
people might well have died.
Despite the
efforts of the Irish naval vessels and others from many countries the deaths
are continuing. Last week as the world mourned a little Syrian child and
grieved with his father for the family he has lost another 200 refugees drowned
less than a mile off the Libyan coast. Some had been locked in the hold of the
ship unable to escape.
So far this
year over two and a half thousand have died in the Mediterranean Sea.
But now the
media and political focus has shifted. Thousands of desperate Syrians, Eritreans,
Kurds, and others have taken to the roads of Europe. They are walking hundreds
of kilometres from Greece, up through the Balkans, to Germany. The Hungarian
government has behaved shamefully but ordinary citizens along their route have
demonstrated great compassion to this unfolding human tragedy.
It was into
this crisis that the dreadful image of Aylan Kurdi has injected a greater sense
of political momentum. Germany has said it will take up to a million refugees.
Other states have been less forthcoming as their governments enter into a new
round of negotiations to discuss how they will respond to this crisis.
The cynic
in me says that the more positive noises in recent days from European
governments has less to do with the photo of a dead child on a beach and more
to do with the countless thousands of refugees who are on the roads of Europe –
no longer penned in to camps or ports in Italy and Greece. This is a human
catastrophe that can no longer be ignored or politically defused with a quota
agreement that targets 40,000 when hundreds of thousands – millions – are on
the move.
Martin
McGuinness moved quickly to argue that the north should take several thousand
refugees. The Irish government is still deciding what it should do but it is
difficult to see how it cannot agree to substantially increase the miserly 600
it was to take under the previous quota system. It needs to decide this quickly
and to respond generously.
Perhaps
it’s because we are an island people, colonised for centuries, who have been
forced to flee in our millions for freedom and work or perhaps it’s because we
naturally abhor injustice. But whatever the reason the public response has been
amazing. Thousands of offers of accommodation and help, including collections
of clothing, have been made. Ordinary citizens have opened their hearts and are
pledging to open their homes also to aid those in need.
The
governments of Europe have a responsibility to do more. It was their greed and
imperial ambitions that created the context for much of this crisis 100 years
ago. It was the political and military decisions they have taken in the decades
since, and mostly recently in respect of Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Libya and
Afghanistan, that have shaped the violent maelstrom that is gripping the Middle
East and north Africa. In Syria alone hundreds of thousands have died; seven
million citizens have been disposed of their homes and communities within the
country and more than five million are scattered in refugee camps in
surrounding states.
The conditions in the camps are appalling and are set to get worse. The
United Nations humanitarian agencies have no money and cannot meet the needs of
millions. In recent months food rations for Syrian refugees in Lebanon and
Jordan, as well as in north Africa have been cut. Many health care services run
by the UN in Iraq have been closed. Last month 184 health clinics run by the
World Health Organisation in Iraq were also closed. WHO needs $60 million for
Iraq. Thus far it has only raised $5 million.
A recent report in the Guardian newspaper quoted one Syrian refugee,
Fatmeh, who said of her two children in Lebanon: “When we can’t afford both medicine and food, I tie scarves around my
boys’ bellies at night so they don’t wake up crying from stomach aches because
they are hungry.”
Is it any
wonder that families have chosen to make the perilous journey to Europe? It’s
time that the EU institutions, European governments and Mr. Kenny and his
colleagues, agreed to be as generous and as imaginative and as compassionate as
this crisis demands of them.
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