A couple of weeks ago, the images of a certain three year-old started circulating the web. The image of the lifeless body of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy who drowned along with his mother and brother while fleeing Syria, washed up on a Turkish beach galvanized the public opinion surrounding the current Syrian refugee crisis. The following public uproar has put pressure on European officials to agree to a plan to tackle the issue.
It later on surfaced that the Kurdi family decided to take the deadly boat journey from Turkey to Greece after their attempts to migrate to Canada, where they had relatives, were turned down.
More recently, CBC has reported that Bassam Katbe, a Syrian living in Laval, was left devastated after learning about his father’s death early Friday morning. Katbe was trying to get his parents safely to Canada through a church-sponsored refugee claim, but his father Abrahim Katbe passed away in a Lebanon hospital while waiting for the decision to be made.
Katbe is devastated by the situation. “It’s just that I believe it’s unjust what happened; dying a refugee with nobody around you, broken-hearted. He didn’t deserve that,” he said, “If I tell you about a loving father, he’s beyond that.”
Montrealers in downtown on Saturday Sept 5, 2015 protesting against the government’s refugee policy
With over 4 million Syrians still seeking asylum, the situation is a humanitarian catastrophe. The problem has reached alarming levels; it’s no longer the regional crisis it once was thought to be. What once was regarded as a distant problem affecting lives on the other side of the world is making the headlines of regional newspapers in Canada today. It’s not just about the refugees anymore; the relatives of the refugees in other countries are deeply affected by what is going on, and in turn it is impacting the community they’re living in even if it’s thousands of miles away from the actual location of the crisis.
Though where the issue is going remains unclear, one thing is certain: the crisis is closer than ever, and we’re right in the middle of it.
Information obtained from:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/09/syrias-refugee-crisis-in-…
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/drowned-boys-family-sought-refu…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/aylan-kurdi-syrian-boys-f…
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/02/shocking-image-of-drowned-s…
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/04/drowned-syrian-boy-aylan-ku…
Images obtained from:
http://theconcordian.com/2015/09/rallying-for-refugees/#prettyPhoto