Maybe he liked Lego or feared the dark.
Maybe he would have been the next Mozart or a good baker or an average Dad.
But he had a name: Aylan Kurdi, three, from Kobani.
via Alex Andreou. Photo by Reuters
#SayTheirNames #TearDownTheBorders
I don’t like the fact that this is the only photo of Aylan that we have. I don’t like that his death can become a sensational symbol or that it will simply be something “tragic.” Because it is not tragic. It is criminal. Aylan, and his brother Kuldip, five, who also drowned, are not dead because of some “accident.” They were murdered by policies that first made their homes uninhabitable and then by further policies that made their journey to safety deadly.
If Aylan was “european” we would have photos of him smiling, playing with his friends, blowing out the candles on his birthday cake, surrounded by family, and friends who loved him. We would have photos of him being a kid, not a symbol. But this is the only photo that we have. And we cannot just let him be one more nameless statistic.