United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron has come under intense media pressure, with newspapers urging him to ease the stance on illegal immigrants trying to find their way to Europe.
Almost all top newspapers in the UK made the plea after a photograph of a lifeless little boy aged about three years was shown across Europe, a development that depicted the refugee crisis involving immigrants from Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Africa.
London has come in for criticism over the number of refugees it has accepted which is lower than other EU countries in proportion to its population, and photos of the body of little Aylan Kurdi did little to improve the situation.
Kurdi’s body was washed ashore after a migrant boat sank on a Turkish beach of Bodrum, a prime tourist resort, prompting a tweet with the hashtag “#KiyiyaVuranInsanlik” (“Humanity washed ashore”) to go viral, even drawing sympathy from The Sun newspaper, which had taken a hard line on the migrant crisis, publishing a column that compared the immigrants to ‘cockroaches’. “It’s life and death,” read the front page, adding: “Today The Sun urges David Cameron to help those in a life-and-death struggle not of their own making.”
“Tiny victim of a human catastrophe” was the Daily Mail’s headline, along with a photo covering almost all of its front page, while The Mirror said it was ‘Unbearable’.
“If these extraordinarily powerful images of a dead Syrian child washed up on a beach don’t change Europe’s attitude to refugees, what will?” asked The Independent in an editorial which was headlined: “Somebody’s child.”
The paper immediately launched a petition demanding Britain accept “its fair share of refugees” which gained 10,000 signatures in hours.
The image, which spread like wildfire on social media, also appeared on the websites of Spain’s El Pais, El Mundoand El Periodico, which dubbed the image: “The drowning of Europe”.
In Italy, La Repubblica tweeted the picture with the words: “One photo to silence the world.”
The image also dominated the front pages of Sweden’s main newspapers, with the headline in the Dagens Nyheter reading: “The refugee picture which shook the world.”
This week, the Turkish government said the coastguard had rescued over 42,000 migrants in the Aegean Sea in the first five months of 2015 and more than 2,160 in the last week alone, of them Kurdi, who was believed to be one of at least 12 Syrian migrants who died trying to reach Greece when their boats sank in Turkish waters.
The rescue worker said the toddler from the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane. Residents there had last year fled to Turkey year to escape violence by Islamic State (IS) extremists.
The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR says more than 2,500 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean so far this year.
Migrants, many of whom have paid over $1,000 to smugglers for the risky passage, are taking advantage of the calm summer weather which makes this the best time for the crossing.
