Europe’s forgotten dead

We are no longer shocked by pictures of drowned children.

By Annalisa Camilli

INTERNATIONAL WATERS NORTH OF LIBYA — When the boy’s naked body was lifted onto the rescue ship, he had seemed alive. A doctor on board certified he died only a short time before we had arrived.

For the crew onboard the Open Arms, some 80 miles off the coast of Libya, that was what was so devastating: how close we had come to reaching him in time.

Not a single front page of a major European newspaper mentioned his passing.

We’ve come a long way from September 2015, when a photograph shocked Europe out of its complacency.

The image of the lifeless body of a young Syrian boy — Alan Kurdi — washed up on the beach of Bodrum, in Turkey, became a powerful symbol of the exodus of thousands of Syrians fleeing the civil war and underlined the urgency of a European response.

Three-year-old Kurdi, with his blue shorts and red T-shirt, carried the front pages of every major European newspaper. The arresting image prompted European leaders to come to an agreement later that month to relocate 160,000 asylum seekers from Italy and Greece, countries that were buckling under the strain of caring for the high number of arrivals.

It led to rescue operations in Mediterranean by European military vessels — and by independent NGOs. The Open Arms rescue mission was launched by the Spanish businessman Òscar Camps three years ago, after he saw the photo of Alan Kurdi.

Published at https://www.politico.eu/article/migration-mediterranean-sea-italy-libya-europe-forgotten-dead/