It’s been a year now since the body of three-year-old Alan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach, an image which finally got the world to stand up and take notice of the migrant crisis tragedy, if only briefly.
The moment his drowned body washed up on the beach near Bodrum it quickly appeared on front pages around the world with closet racism briefly halted, because how could you condemn this child as part of a ‘swarm’ travelling through Europe?
However, this was forgotten in a week or two and even with the healthy reminder of the brutal conflict after another clip emerged of a young child being rescued from a building hit during an airstrike, that was still not enough to shock the world into action.
So Alan Kurdi’s father Abdullah al-Kurdi decided enough was enough and spoke to the BBC, to urge Europe to keep its doors open to refugees.
This was one year after sons Alan, 3, and Galip, 5, and their mother Rehan, 35, drowned when their boat over-turned en route from Syria to the Greek island of Kos.
With all that in mind, following the interview, Daily Mail mouthpiece Katie Hopkins decided to tweet this:
Some were quick to condemn her lack of sympathy:
But the most depressing thing about all this was that many agreed with her disgraceful views:
What would probably be more ‘ballsy’ is to put yourself in these people shoes. So I propose an idea for a new reality series where Katie has to spend a month in war-torn Syria and not allow her to leave for a month.
Then, finally after that month she has to try and make it back to the UK without flying, let’s say for example, going across a poorly built and normally over-crowded boat across the Med instead? Maybe that’d give her some perspective?
The UK isn’t exactly helping with the situation either, as The Independent found out that the government is failing to fulfil its pathetic promise to take in 20,000 refugees by 2020.
The Home Office told the news organisation that it had given refuge to around 2,800 people, much less than the 4,000 a year needed to meet the commitment.
Kurdi, who’s now living in northern Iraq, said:
At first the world was anxious to help the refugees. But this did not even last a month. In fact the situation got worse. The war has escalated and more people are leaving. I hope that all the leaders of the world can try and do good and stop the wars, so that the people can go back to normal life.
We can only hope that governments around Europe listen to this and finally take action to avoid these sort of tragedies from needlessly happening again.
