It will be a long time before anyone forgets the picture of three-year-old Syrian-Kurdish refugee Alan Kurdi lying dead, face down on a beach in the Turkish resort town of Bodrum. The details of his tragic story are now known across the world, but are still worth repeating.
The boy drowned, along with his 35-year-old mother, Rehan, and five-year-old brother Galip, after the dinghy they were travelling in capsized in the Mediterranean as they were trying to reach the Greek Island of Kos, an entry point to Europe for thousands of refugees like them fleeing war, religious persecution, or crushing poverty.
The photo marked a point of no return when it comes to the world’s understanding of the so-called “European migration crisis.” Young Alan’s image plastered over the morning papers and news broadcasts was a wake-up call: no one can turn away from the enormity of our collective failure to help those fleeing war. It now stares us in the face in the form of the lifeless body of a toddler.
A woman in the office tower where I work wept silently as the photo of the boy’s body flashed across a television screen in the lobby. We were all sickened, saddened, and appalled. Many immediately and generously donated funds to relief organizations.
But Canada’s response in helping children like Alan has been woefully inadequate since the civil war in Syria started more than four years ago. Those who work with refugees in Canada know this.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is now saying he will bring an additional 10,000 Syrian refugees to Canada over the next three years if he’s re-elected. The Liberals and NDP vow to bring in even more.
But compare Canada to Germany, a country with just over double our population that accepted roughly 15,000 refugees last weekend alone, and it is clear that Canadian leaders of all political stripes are falling well below the mark on this urgent humanitarian crisis.
Against this backdrop, Torontonians hit the streets Friday, September 4 in a protest organized by advocacy group No One is Illegal. More than 1,000 people marched from Yonge-Dundas Square to demand justice for migrants and refugees, sitting in at the intersection of Yonge and Queen en route to the offices of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada on Victoria Street. A smaller but equally forceful protest took place the day before, on September 3, outside the offices of Citizenship and Immigration Canada on St. Clair East.
As a participant in both, I feared some form of resistance or opposition from onlookers or possibly the police, given the antagonism towards refugee and immigrant issues in general since the Conservatives took power. But there was none. Quite the opposite, in fact.
During our sit-in at Queen and Yonge, a total hush fell over the crowd watching our protest. Aside from the clicking of cameras, you could have heard a pin drop on a Friday evening at one of the city’s busiest intersections. As I looked around in slight disbelief, a man in the crowd raised his fist to me as if to say “power to the people.”
At the protest a day earlier, an elderly woman exiting the library across the street – she had to have been in her late 80s – joined our demonstration in the stifling heat.
It is the power of ordinary Canadians that will keep this crisis in the public eye and put the pressure on politicians to do the right thing and welcome this newest generation of the dispossessed to our country – just like we did with displaced people fleeing Europe after the Second World War and Vietnam in the 1970s. It is ordinary Canadians who can make sure one little boy did not die in vain.
Niamh Harraher has practiced law with a focus on refugee children in the UK and Ontario.
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