The irony, dear Aylan, who never had a life, is that you died in vain as eastern and western Europe point accusatory fingers at each other with many nations blaming Russia for the Syrian crisis.

By Bikram Vohra

Remember Kim Phuc. She became the image burned into the global mind for the Vietnam war, screaming in pure fear and running unclothed after a napalm attack.

So too will these pictures of of Aylan Kurdi, a Syrian refugee seeking a safe haven, become the ‘poster’ for the migrant problem in Europe and round the world with the figure now at 50 million refugees shot out of the barrel of a gun. Literally. He lay there on the Turkish beach in silent indictment.

You cannot but shudder with horror.

The present influx into Germany will cross 800,000 paperless refugees this year, four times that of last year. Chancellor Angela Merkel is calling on other European nations to share the human burden. As Germany opened its doors countries last night, like Hungary and Austria, blew a gasket about the overcrowding at their ports of exit including jams at train stations.

But, dear EU leaders, how will you sleep tonight with the image of Aylan lying there like a broken rag doll, the waters of hostility lapping gently against his lifeless body, as if mocking Europe’s closed doors.

It is no longer Africans and Oriental sardine-packed men women and children being literally trafficked across treacherous waters for that elusive better life. In a bitter irony the Empires of history have come back to haunt the colonisers and they must soon be thinking if they hadn’t set sail to conquer the new world, the new world would not be coming back to them in droves.

But they are coming and knocking on your door and that door has to be opened on sheer humanitarian grounds and more done to end the internecine wars that pockmark the map today.

The irony, dear Aylan, who never had a life, is that you died in vain as eastern and western Europe point accusatory fingers at each other with many nations blaming Russia for the Syrian crisis.

Is this the time for blame?

Find the key, open the gates and let mankind live. Else, start building your walls again like you did in Berlin. I do not jest, it is being seen as a possibility. The idea of building a wall between Canada and the US to keep out illegal immigrants recently has been ridiculed in most quarters and rightly so. Walls do not keep people in. Peace and the right to live with security and an absence of constant fear is what mankind wants. And mankind is not getting it.

On the contrary the walls are coming up and they do not always have to be made of brick and mortar to be impenetrable.

Look at the picture again. Can you sleep tonight? And for those who flinch and can feel the horror, his five year old brother also drowned as they sought the sanctuary of peace.

The author is a senior Dubai-based journalist.