One terrible image of a dead child shocked the world and changed the debate about refugees fleeing war.

JOE O’BRIEN: Now, sometimes with wars and humanitarian disasters there’s an incident or an image which come to symbolise the tragedy of it all and there are some heartbreaking images that emerged overnight, a solider retrieving the body of a toddler washed up on the beach in Turkey. If you don’t want to see this, you can look away but it’s an image which is having a profound impact in Europe. 

— ABC News 24, 3rd September, 2015

Hello I’m Paul Barry, welcome to Media Watch. 

And tonight we’re going to spend the program looking at the power of that image, which has shocked the world, shaken politicians, and transformed the debate about refugees fleeing from war.

And it is of course the image of a small dead Syrian child, washed up on a beach at Bodrum in Turkey 12 days ago. 

Three-year old Aylan Kurdi drowned with his five-year old brother Galip and mother Rehan as they tried to reach the Greek island of Kos in a small, overloaded rubber dinghy. 

To be discovered just after dawn by Turkish photographer Nilufer Demir:


“ ... He was lying lifeless face down in the surf, in his red T-shirt and dark blue shorts folded to his waist.

“The only thing I could do was to make his outcry heard.

“When I realised there was nothing to do to bring that boy back to life I thought I had to take his picture ... to show the tragedy.’

— Mirror Online, 4th September, 2015

Aylan was caught up in a tide of humanity that has been flooding out of Turkey into Europe. 

Each night near Bodrum under the cover of darkness, Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis and their families pile into unsafe boats for the five kilometre journey to Greece and the hope of a new life. 

More than 250,000 have made it across this year, paying people-smugglers up to $2000 a head. 

But well over 100 have drowned with another 34 this weekend and Aylan and his family among the casualties. 


REPORTER: The confirmed dead include five children and one woman. Many of the migrants do not have life vests.

— EuroNews, 2nd September, 2015

But little Aylan’s death has had an impact like no other. 

Within hours of his body being recovered, photos of the dead child—in posts like this from Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch—were going viral on social media:


Just pause 4 moment & imagine this was your child, drowned trying 2 flee #Syria war 4 safety of #EU ...

— Twitter, @bouckap, 2nd September, 2015

Bouckaert, who was in Hungary as thousands of refugees struggled to reach Germany, told Media Watch that his message had been quoted and retweeted many thousands of times. 


I think it went viral because of the power of the photo, it’s a child we can identify with, and most parents thought it could be their child.

— Twitter, @bouckap, 2nd September, 2015

That same day, as the photos and the outrage spread, almost every newspaper in Europe debated whether or not to show them.

Dead children are normally taboo.

Especially on the front page.

But next morning almost every UK newspaper broke the rule and ran an image on the front cover. 

With some like the Mirror and the Independent accompanying dramatic full-page treatment with a passionate plea for action. 


... the heartbreaking human face of a tragedy the world can no longer ignore 

— Daily Mirror, 3rd September, 2015


A vast human catastrophe is unfolding. Do we really believe this is not our problem? 

— The Independent, 3rd September, 2015

Editors in Europe mostly took the same decision ... with the dead child on the cover that morning:

In Spain

Belgium

Greece

The Netherlands

Italy

France

And Germany

... for a total of at least 30 papers .. with the German tabloid Bild telling readers in perhaps the most emotional plea: 


ENGLISH TRANSLATION: This photo is a message to the whole world, to finally unite and ensure that not a single child dies again on the run. After all, who are we, what are our values worth if we continue to allow such things to happen? 

— Bild, 3rd September, 2015

So why did they all act as one? 

First no doubt, because the image was so moving.

Second because it was already being widely shared on social media and editors could see how much anger it had caused.

And third, because of its timing.

Europe has watched for weeks as the biggest movement of refugees since the Second World War has become a stampede. 

As the editor of Britain’s Independent explained: 


Our motivation ... was to shock the world into action ... and to put pressure on a Prime Minister whose behaviour in this crisis has been embarrassing. 

— The Independent, 5th September, 2015

David Cameron’s initial response –to do nothing— was captured in the Guardian on the day it published the pictures:

Cameron: we can’t take any more people fleeing from war

— The Guardian, 3rd September, 2015

But within hours of seeing Aylan on all the front pages Britain’s PM was admitting he was deeply moved. And within days Cameron had agreed to accept 20,000 more refugees, whom he’d previously described as a swarm.

Here in Australia it was not till next day that our papers carried the photo ... and while some flagged it on the cover, they ran it on the inside pages as someone else’s problem:


THE IMAGES THAT STOPPED EUROPE

— The Courier-Mail, 4th September, 2015


The harrowing shot felt around the world

— The Age, 4th September, 2015

At first, Australia’s Prime Minister took the same line as Britain’s, expressing sadness at the image, but putting in a plug for his own government’s policy:


TONY ABBOTT: Well, I’d say if you want to stop the deaths, if you want to stop the drownings, you’ve got to stop the boats ... 

…If you want keep people safe, you’ve got to stop illegal migration and that’s what we’ve done.

— ABC Goulburn Murray, Mornings with Joseph Thomsen, 4th September, 2015

The PM’s position to hold fast was robustly supported by Conservative columnist Piers Akerman, who argued that Europe needed to learn from Australia and stop the tide at source.


The body of a small boy lying dead on the tideline of a Turkish beach has become the powerful new image of European failure. Failure to take a united stand against Islamist barbarism, failure to abandon a disastrous policy of multiculturalism and failure to reverse its liberal immigration policies.

— Daily Telegraph, 4th September, 2015

But on television the power of the images had already made the ABC’s Joe O’Brien almost choke up ...

... and on Ten’s The Project, host Carrie Bickmore had had even more trouble holding it together.


CARRIE BICKMORE: I just can’t look at that without being so upset, like it just makes me think how lucky, lucky I am that I live in Australia, that my children live in Australia. That’s what it is. 

WALEED ALY: Yeah. 

— Channel Ten, The Project, 3rd September, 2015

And on social media, as in Europe, the tide of feeling was rising. 

On social media too a visceral reaction to the picture from NSW Premier Mike Baird helped nudge the PM and his party towards a more generous response:


I felt sick with overwhelming sorrow. And despair. And anger ...

Sometimes you can know all the facts and statistics surrounding an unfolding tragedy, but it somehow remains an intangible or external problem. A problem that is almost too hard to get your head around.

And then you see a photo. And somehow it changes everything.

— Facebook, Mike Baird MP, 5th September, 2015

And sure enough it did. There were vigils around the country.

And headlines like this in the Herald Sun that we’ve rarely if ever seen in the refugee debate. 


LET THEM IN 

10,000 Victorians rally as Australia opens arms to Syrian refugees

— Herald Sun, 8th September, 2015

For a week refugees were also the subject of almost every radio and TV debate.

Until pressure from voters and Coalition backbenchers finally caused the Prime Minister to yield, with a pledge of $44 million in emergency aid to refugees still stuck in camps, and a promise to open Australia’s doors to more of those seeking shelter:


TONY ABBOTT: ... Australia will resettle an additional 12,000 refugees from the Syria/Iraq conflict. 

... This is a very significant increase in Australia's humanitarian intake and it's a generous response to the current emergency.

— ABC News 24, 9th September, 2015

All from the power of one dead little boy.

But not everyone is happy with that result. 

Even before the PM increased the number of refugees Australia will take, conservative columnists like Andrew Bolt were trying to prevent the heart hijacking a debate they had been winning.


ANDREW BOLT: Doesn’t this show you the danger of this sort of relaxed border policies that the Greens promote?

RICHARD DI NATALE: Really? Is that, is that how you, how you see? I mean you’ve got a three-year-old kid being dragged out of the water because they’re dead, okay. You’ve got more people moving across the planet than at any other time in human history, we’ve got countries right around the world saying, ‘look we’re gonna have to provide these people with some help and refuge because this is a crisis’, and you want to turn your back on people in that, fleeing that persecution?

ANDREW BOLT: No, but I don’t want to encourage, don’t want to encourage more of what we’re seeing.

— Channel Ten, Bolt Report, 6th September, 2015

Part of Bolt’s argument that Australia must not soften was that we’d been conned by the image: that Aylan’s family had been in Turkey for three years and were not in fact refugees at all. 


... Aylan was not in “harm’s way”. He was not a refugee. His family was not fleeing danger.

Indeed, what his father particularly sought in Europe was a good dentist. 

Yes, Aylan’s terrible death does not tell us to open our borders. If anything, it warns us to be wary of the consequences of badly directed “compassion”.

— Herald Sun, 7th September, 2015

Bolt’s attempt to discredit the family was echoed by 2GB shock jock Alan Jones, who also chose to focus on Aylan’s father Abdullah and his search for a ‘good dentist’.


ALAN JONES: He was not at risk. He was not a refugee. His family were not escaping danger. His father was not a refugee in the sense that there was a risk to his life. Tragically, the father was after a good dentist.

— 2GB, The Alan Jones Breakfast Show, 8th September, 2015

And Bolt also repeated the argument on radio in his regular slot with Steve Price on 2GB, where he claimed it was the father’s desire for free teeth in Europe that had got Aylan killed. 


ANDREW BOLT: That is why the boy died. 

STEVE PRICE: A lot of people didn’t want to hear that.

ANDREW BOLT: No, they didn’t want to hear that ... The public is being denied so much information that completely distorts the picture. I think it is shocking and journalists may well say, or feel, that they’re doing this from an excess of virtue. But when the virtue leads to making Australia less safe, it is not a virtue, it’s a sin.

— 2GB, Nights with Steve Price, 7th September, 2015

So is any of that true? 

Well, the story of the teeth comes from Aylan’s aunt Tima—who lives in Canada—and who fronted the media tearfully on 3rd September:


TIMA KURDI: They didn’t deserve to die. They didn’t. They were going for a better life. 

— You Tube, Tima Kurdi Medai Conference, 3rd September, 2015

During a 20 minute Q&A it was Tima who told reporters:


TIMA KURDI: Abdullah does not have any teeth, has a story about it. So, I been trying to help him fix his teeth. But it’s gonna cost me 14,000 and up to do it, he need dentures, he need teeth implants. 

TIMA KURDI: ... Actually my dad, he come up with the idea, he said to me, ‘I think if they go to Europe for his kids and for better future, I think he should do that, and then we’ll, we’ll see if he can fix his teeth.’ 

— You Tube, Tima Kurdi Medai Conference, 3rd September, 2015

So yes, Aylan’s father did want new teeth. 

But how had he lost them?

Well according to Tima’s husband Rocco Logozzo, not in Turkey, and not from decay. 


... Abdullah had his teeth pulled by the rebels. 

— Rocco Logozzo, 10th September, 2015

Rocco also told us bluntly: 


The issue with his teeth had absolutely nothing to do with the decision to leave. The reason for leaving is the same as the other millions of refugees from Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan. All those countries have been destroyed and people's lives have been destroyed. They were just looking for a better life. Is that so wrong?

— Rocco Logozzo, 9th September, 2015

The claim from Bolt and Jones that the family had been in Turkey three years is also denied.

Aylan and Galip and their mother were in the Syrian city of Kobane until September last year, according to their uncle and aunt and friends in Istanbul. 

They fled for good as the city came under fierce attack from Islamic State ... it has now been all but destroyed. 

So surely they were refugees.

But the latest claim is that Abdullah was in fact a people smuggler:


The poor boy is dead. But nothing else about the Aylan Kurdi story is true

It also turns out that the boy’s father was the people smuggler, and had overloaded his boat ...

— Herald Sun, 12th September, 2015

Aylan’s father Abdullah was not one of the four people arrested by Turkish police. And again the claim, first raised by Channel Ten news, is hotly denied by the family, with his brother in law describing it as:


... “simply untrue and made up.”

— National Post, 11th September, 2015

And also telling CBC News 


“He doesn't know how to operate a boat ... It's pretty ridiculous ...”

— CBC News, 11th September, 2015

But even if these claims were right, would it really change the argument? 

The Kurdi family fled from war in Syria. 

And like two million other Syrian refugees now in Turkey they faced an uncertain future, because of Turkey’s policy not to resettle them.

As an expert in refugee law Professor Jane McAdam told Media Watch: 


There’s no requirement in international law that a person stop in the first country they reach.

Millions of Syrians have been waiting in Turkey for years, waiting to go home and as that situation has become more protracted and acute, and as conditions deteriorate, it is perfectly normal for people to move on to seek safe haven elsewhere.

— Professor Jane McAdam, UNSW Law School, 11th September, 2015

Figures show that 94% of Syrians who’ve made it from Turkey to Greece and applied for refugee status have been accepted

And as Steve Ryan from the International Red Cross explained to Channel Seven’s Sunrise from amid the throng in Budapest: 


STEPHEN RYAN: The majority of these people, they come from countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and they’re coming here seeking refuge, seeking asylum, so as such they, they shouldn’t be viewed as illegal migrants. They should be viewed as people who are seeking refugee status.

— Channel Seven, Sunrise, 4th September, 2015

So why were Bolt and Jones and others so keen to claim that Aylan Kurdi and his family should have stayed where they were. 

Well, perhaps because they know where the power of that little dead boy’s image might drive debate in this country.

Indeed, by late last week, some in the media were already beginning to go there: 


Spot the difference: good vs. bad refugees

— News.com.au, 10th September, 2015


Australia's generosity to Syrian refugees ignores those still languishing offshore

— Guardian Australia, 10th September, 2015


Resettle Syrian refugees on Manus and Nauru urges Gillian Triggs

— The Australian, 10th September, 2015

We’re not sure that the image of Aylan Kurdi is powerful enough to move the major parties on that. 

And we take no position on whether it should. 

But what’s remarkable is that the death of one small boy on a beach 15,000 kilometers away, has already done so much to shift debate and action here in Australia.

A little boy who did not die in vain. 

And the Syrian conflict has now been going for more than four years, during which almost 8 million people have been displaced and 4 million have fled the country. 

Last week Bulent Kilic from Agence France Presse won an award for a series of images taken in June as 20,000 Syrian refugees tried to cross the border into Turkey. We’ll leave you tonight with these other powerful images and his own eyewitness account of what it was like to be at the scene. 


Almost every other person was carrying a baby, they were shouting and trying to get through the gap. The opening was so small that people were treading on one another to get across the border. Children were being passed over the barbed wire. I hope I never see anything like that again.

— AFP, 15th June, 2015

And that's all from us, Until next week, Goodnight.

http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s4312433.htm