Reflecting on the migrant crisis
DURING the Vietnam War in 1972 a South Vietnamese warplane dropped a napalm bomb on a group of fleeing villagers mistaking them for the enemy. A photographer captured some of the action and in particular the horror scene of a young girl, her clothes gone and her skin burning trying in vain to outrun the terror. Her name was Phan Thi Kim Phuc. She would become better known as The Girl in the Picture. New York Times editors were at first hesitant to publish the shocking photo but eventually did so. Its impact was immediate and was an important factor in changing American public opinion against that war. President Nixon anticipated its effect and in a contemporary tape recording is heard saying to one of his aides when he saw the picture: “I’m wondering if that was fixed.” The photograph was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and chosen as World Press Photo for 1972.
The image of a little boy’s body recently washed up on a beach in Bodrum in Turkey may well in time acquire a similar iconic status for it has brought home to ordinary people, the voters, the men and women on the street, the plight of millions of people from Syria and elsewhere fleeing conflict. Aylan Kurdi was only three and his brother Galip five when they were drowned with their mother when the boat they were in capsized as they tried to reach peace and safety in Europe. Their father, clearly a devoted family man survived, but his dreams are gone forever. It all seems so out of place in Bodrum – a very ancient place once famous for housing the Mausoleum of Mausolus, one of the seven wonders of the Ancient World – but known in our time as a centre for tourism, a place of recreation and enjoyment. But how that has changed.
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