Image of drowned boy strikes chord worldwide

Abdullah Kurdi, father of Aylan, 3, and Galip, 5, waits outside a morgue Thursday in Mugla, Turkey, for the boys’ bodies to arrive from Bodrum, Turkey.
Abdullah Kurdi, father of Aylan, 3, and Galip, 5, waits outside a morgue Thursday in Mugla, Turkey, for the boys’ bodies to arrive from Bodrum, Turkey.

ANKARA, Turkey -- The 3-year-old in blue shorts and a red T-shirt photographed facedown in the surf set out for Europe only after Canada had rejected his family's refugee application, a Canadian lawmaker said.

RELATED ARTICLE

http://www.arkansas…">Hungary begets new standoff

photo

AP/DHA

A paramilitary police officer pulls the lifeless body of Aylan Kurdi, 3, from the surf Wednesday near DHA

Images of Aylan Kurdi's body on a Turkish beach have heightened global attention to a wave of migration, driven by war and deprivation, that is unparalleled since World War II. They are also raising pressure on governments to be more welcoming to refugees fleeing the horror that Syria has become.

Aylan died along with his 5-year-old brother Galip and his mother, Rehan, leaving their distraught father, Abdullah, to cope with his sudden, overwhelming loss. He said Thursday that he wanted one thing and one thing only: to sit by the graves of his wife and children.

"My kids were the most beautiful children in the world, wonderful. They wake me up every morning to play with them. They are all gone now," he said.

In all, 12 migrants drowned when two boats carrying them from the Turkish coast to the Greek island of Kos capsized.

Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency said eight of the 12 were children. It said four suspected people-smugglers were detained Thursday on suspicion of acting as intermediaries in the illegal trafficking.

The agency said the suspects include at least one Syrian citizen. They were expected to appear in court Thursday to face charges.

A Canadian legislator said the Kurdi family, fleeing the conflict in Syria, had been turned down in a bid for legal entry to Canada even though it had close relatives there offering financial backing and shelter.

Canada's Department of Citizenship and Immigration later denied that assertion.

"There was no record of an application received for Mr. Abdullah Kurdi and his family," the department said in a statement. It was the boy's uncle, a brother of Tima and Abdullah, who applied and was rejected because of insufficient documentation, the department said.

Accounts of events changed several times Thursday as information flowed in from several parts of the world.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said some early accounts contained inaccurate information.

Tima Kurdi of Vancouver, who is Abdullah's sister and moved to Canada more than 20 years ago, initially told Canadian journalists that the family had embarked on the perilous boat journey only after its bid was rejected. She later said, however, that no formal request for refugee status had been made on Abdullah Kurdi's behalf, saying one was filed, and rejected, on another relative's behalf. She also gave a different transliteration for the boys' names, calling them Alan and Galib.

Tima Kurdi had sought to obtain Canadian refugee status for her relatives in the Syrian city of Kobani, which was devastated by battles between Islamic State militants and Kurdish fighters, said Canadian lawmaker Fin Donnelly. He submitted the application on the family's behalf.

The family's case was referred to Immigration Minister Chris Alexander, the Ottawa Citizen reported. It's unclear whether he appealed on behalf of the one brother's application, or the entire family.

Alexander interrupted his re-election campaign Thursday to return to the capital. He said he would look into "facts of the case" relating to the Kurdi family's application.

No changes coming

Speaking near Vancouver, Harper said the refugee problem in Syria and Iraq is "one small aspect" of the regional conflict and that Canada won't change its approach.

"I don't need to tell you what we saw yesterday was a tragedy," Harper said. "What I need to tell you is it is far, far worse than that."

Harper said he thought of his own son when he saw the photo but didn't commit to any increased pledge to welcome refugees. "Refugee policy alone is not remotely a solution to this problem. It is of a scale far, far beyond that," the prime minister said, arguing part of the solution is to continue bombing campaigns against Islamic State fighters.

"Grief is a terrible thing," Harper said. "Our hearts go out to the family, anybody touched by this, but our message has been the same all along. We are admitting more refugees and we will."

Other Western leaders reacted with shock and solemnity to the photo.

"What has drowned in the Mediterranean is not only the refugees," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a summit in Ankara. "Humanity has drowned in the Mediterranean Sea."

Erdogan has repeatedly called on Europe to help shoulder his country's overwhelming burden.

"He had a name: Alyan Kurdi. Urgent action required -- a Europe-wide mobilization is urgent," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls wrote in a tweet that included the photo of a Turkish policeman carrying the toddler's corpse.

French President Francois Hollande appeared at a news conference in Paris alongside Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, who called the death of Aylan a "human catastrophe."

Describing the tragedy, Abdullah Kurdi said the overloaded boat flipped moments after the captain, described as a Turkish man, panicked and abandoned the vessel four minutes after it left Turkey to make for the Greek island of Kos.

"I took over and started steering. The waves were so high and the boat flipped. I took my wife and my kids in my arms and I realized they were all dead," he said.

In a police statement later leaked to the Turkish news agency Dogan, Abdullah Kurdi gave a different account, denying that a smuggler was aboard. However, smugglers often instruct migrants that if caught they should deny their presence, and it was unclear whether he had been trying to protect a smuggler's identity in his statement to police.

The distraught father, who worked as a barber in Syria, added wistfully: "All I want is to be with my children at the moment."

He said he planned to take his family's remains back to Kobani for burial.

"I want the whole world to see," he said. "We went through a disaster and I don't want other people to suffer the same."

Photo widespread

The photograph of lifeless Aylan Kurdi, seen around the world on social media and in print, has highlighted the desperation of those risking their lives to try to reach Europe, sparking fresh calls for countries to do more to ease their passage.

In the United Kingdom, United Nations refugee agency representative Laura Padoan said publication of the photographs of Aylan may spark a major change in the public's perception of the burgeoning crisis.

"I think a lot of people will think about their own families and their own children in relation to those images," she said. "It is difficult for politicians to turn their backs on those kind of images and the very real tragedy that is happening."

That was epitomized in reactions from people around the world.

Kathleen Fetters-Iossi, a 47-year-old fiction writer from West Bend, Wis., said she hopes people share the images to create awareness, then go beyond that to try to help in some way. But she has her doubts any concrete action will come of it.

"Most Americans, if they're just now becoming aware of this issue, will ultimately feel there's nothing we can do," she said. "They feel like we can't handle our own immigration problem, let alone Europe's. Social media can help by creating wider awareness, but ultimately ... it's not going to help those migrants."

In Greece, Alicia Stallings, a mother of two, said she won't link to the photo.

"I watch my kids swim and play in the Aegean and am sometimes struck by horror when I think this is the same water in which children just like them are drowning every day," she wrote in an email.

"One hates for something like this be the galvanizing element -- we are pretty hard-hearted if we can ignore all the other hundreds of drownings happening all the time. But the scale is vast, and as humans it is easier for us to comprehend one specific tragedy, in a shirt and shoes like our own kids."

Ary Cordovil, a 35-year-old barber, lives near one of Rio de Janeiro's slums.

"I'm used to violence. Brazil is used to seeing violence. But this -- this is just painful," he said, staring hard at the image in a newspaper. "He's just a baby trying to flee a war."

Information for this article was contributed by Suzan Fraser, Gregory Katz, Rob Gillies, Tamara Lush, Brad Brooks and Almudena Calatrava of The Associated Press; by Josh Wingrove of Bloomberg News; and by Ishaan Tharoor of The Washington Post.

A Section on 09/04/2015

Upcoming Events