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Image of dead child on beach haunts and frustrates the world

Will it spur action on Syrian migrant crisis in Europe?

By TAMARA LUSH, Associated Press
Published: September 3, 2015, 4:46pm

The photo of the dead 3-year-old Syrian boy on a Turkish beach is haunting. 

It captures everything we don’t want to see when we tap our phones or open our newspapers: a vicious civil war, a surge of refugees, the death of an innocent.

The image of little Aylan Kurdi is hammering home the Syrian migrant crisis to the world, largely through social media. Aylan died along with his 5-year-old brother and their mother when their small rubber boat capsized as it headed for Greece.

“It is a very painful picture to view,” said Peter Bouckaert, who, as director of emergencies at Human Rights Watch, has witnessed his fair share of painful scenes. “It had me in tears when it first showed up on my mobile phone. I had to think hard whether to share this.”

But share, he did. Bouckaert, who is in Hungary watching the crisis unfold, said people need to be pushed to look at the “ghastly spectacle” so they can, in turn, prod governments to help the suffering Syrian people.

Still, will the disturbing image galvanize people into action? Will it be like other seared-in-our-memory photographs — a vulture hovering over a starving child in Sudan, a girl fleeing a napalm attack in Vietnam, the child in a firefighter’s arms after the Oklahoma City bombing?

Or will it become just another of the many images on social media, lost amid the flotsam?

“One of the things about this story is that it’s really difficult sometimes for the world to get a handle on it,” said Al Tompkins, a senior faculty member at the Poynter Institute, a center for media studies in St. Petersburg, Fla. “Regardless of the technology, a singular iconic image can still touch us in ways.”

And that singular image is often of a child. That was the cold fact that unsettled people around the globe.

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, ‘clicktivism’ didn’t help the Nigerian girls, and it’s not going to help those migrants.”

Jeremy Barnicle, chief development officer of the humanitarian group Mercy Corps in Portland, said it remains to be seen whether the outpouring of grief on social media for Aylan will translate into tangible help.

“For many Americans, the conflict in the Middle East is distant and complicated, and therefore tough to engage on,” he said. “A photo like this reminds people why we should all care.”

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