The ultimate injustice one can commit to Aylan Kurdi and his family is to omit the parts of his story which explain why he ended up dead on the beach. The details matter:
1) Abdullah Kurdi, the father, was detained for 5 months in Air Force Intelligence in Damascus. While in detention, he was tortured and his teeth were pulled out. He had to sell his shop in Damascus in order to bribe the officers to let him out. This cost him 5,000,000 Syrian Liras (around $25,000)
2) After he bribed his way out of jail, Abdullah fled to Aleppo with his wife and sons, Alyan and Ghalib. The situation in Aleppo became dangerous due to the constant aerial bombardment, so he fled again to Kobani, his hometown.
3) When ISIS attacked Kobani last year, the family could no longer live in their hometown, so they fled to Turkey. Once in Turkey, the Turkish government did not provide them with assistance, so they paid almost $6,000 to secure 4 spots on a rubber dingy to the Greek island of Kos.
4) While on the boat, rough waters caused the boat to flip. The lifejackets they were given were fake. His sons and wife all drowned in front of his eyes, in his arms.
5) Kurdi had applied in June for refuge to Canada, but was rejected. After Aylan's photo became a media story, he was reportedly offered citizenship to Canada. But he doesn't want to go to Canada or Europe anymore. He says he will go bury his family in Kobani and stay there to fight against ISIS, because everything has been taken away from him and he has "nothing to live for."
So if the world wants no more Aylans on the beach, someone needs to do some combination of the following based on above: (1) stop torture and arbitrary detention by the Assad regime, (2) stop the regime's aerial bombardment, (3) stop ISIS, (4) make traveling to Europe safe, (5) get Canada and the USA to accept more refugees.
Thank you for the post....I read it when someone else posted it. I reposted it often.....sorry I did not contribute it to you. It was a powerful piece of writing and many have appreciated it. Thank you
ReplyDeleteThank-you too.
ReplyDeleteWhere did you get the information that he lost his teeth in Damascus and had to sell his store ?
ReplyDeleteKenen Rahmani got it from this interview with the dentist who did some work on him when he was in Aleppo.
ReplyDelete[http://www.all4syria.info/Archive/247935]
Other information was derived from The Globe And Mail.
[http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/they-died-in-my-arms-father-of-drowned-migrant-boy-speaks-out/article26207543/]
Thanks Dick. But according to the Telegraph "[Abdullah] says he has suffered at the hands of every side in Syria's brutal civil war. At the beginning of the anti-Assad revolution, he was tortured by Syrian state security services, while during the Islamic State takeover of Kobane, he was arrested by Isil fanatics and beaten again, this time losing eight of his teeth." Source : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/11846698/I-have-buried-my-soul-along-with-my-sons-father-of-drowned-Syrian-toddler.html.
ReplyDeleteDoes this means that his teeth was taken off twice ? (I'm just trying to get the facts).
Clearly the Telegraph is wrong to say he suffered at the hands of every side, as the rebels against Assad are not on ISIS' side.
ReplyDelete