“I don’t want anything else from this world. Everything I was dreaming of is gone. I want to bury my children and sit beside them until I die,” lamented Abdullah Kurdi to CNN on Thursday. Africa and the Middle East stand shrouded in a dreaded migrant crisis today. The body of a 3 year old boy washed ashore on a beach in Turkey, has made international coverage. Aylan Kurdi, from Syria has reportedly had drowned along with his mother and brother, off the coast of Turkey because of lack of authorized immigration visas, and this has created a scary boom on the Canadian soil.
The small child Aylan Kurdi’s gory photograph, has grabbed attention of the masses and, people are struck stunned at the crisis brought about due to the inability to get authorized immigration visas. The Canadian election is now facing an emotional mayhem because of the sad predicament of the Kurdi family. The family it seems was travelling to the Greek Island of Kos from Turkey and drowned in the death-defying incident . The father of the boy, Abdullah Kurdi, managed to survive the dangerous journey but he lost his family to the waters.
The traditionalist thoughts of the Prime Minister Stephen J. Harper’s government and the refugee policies laid down by it, have been greatly condemned by the religious and advocacy groups, and opposition political parties in the past, but now the recent Kurdi family case has raised a furor in the country.
The dead toddler’s aunt Tima Kurdi, who resides in Coquitlam, B.C., had been making efforts to help the Kurdi family to shift to Canada and settle there. In March, taking matters into hand personally, The NDP MP for Coquitlam’s Port Moody had submitted a letter to Chris Alexander, the Immigration Minister asking the authorities to allow the Kurdi family and her brother Mohammed, refugee permission to settle in Canada, but still these deaths took place.
The Canadian system specifies that a family of four needs a sponsorship of about 27,000 Canadian dollars and for this the authorities demand financial guarantees. The Kurdi family was trying to get branded as Turkish refugees and then they could get Canadian permission to enter the country. The task of getting into Canada via this route is almost impossible. The death of the child has led to unrest in Canada and the Government’s callous way of dealing with the refugees is being severely rebuked. The Government has also messed with the aid groups and academics because of their refusal to refurbish their refugee stance.
The Government had committed entry to about 10,000 Syrian refugees for over three years. Since a few months, the citizenship and immigration minister, Chris Alexender and his immigration officials were tight lipped and were not revealing the way the Syrians were allowed admittance into the country. Since August 24th, almost 1074 Sryian refugees have set up base in Canada.
Project manager of Lifeline Syria , Alexandra Kotyk, has given a statement that “At the end of the 1970s and in the 1980s, Canada did an amazing job of taking in refugees,” but he feared that “I really think we’re not living up to our normal humanitarian performance now. The government seems to be leaving a lot of the responsibility to private groups.”
There is no clarity on the number of refugees who will be given sponsorship by the Government, though 60% of total refugees are speculated to get private sponsorship, said reports. The number of sponsors is plenty but they admit that the rules laid down by the Ottawa Government are a hindrance to their work. The rules laid down are very complex and this means a waiting period of years and years for the desperate refugees.
Tom Mulcair, the leader of the New Democratic Party, called this a bureaucratic trap and said that the Government had ignored the plight of the refugees who belonged to the war ravaged states and the migrants coming from places struck by internal conflicts.
On the same topic, Justin Trudeau, the Liberal leader, shared his views saying “You don’t get to suddenly discover compassion in the middle of an election campaign. You either have it or you don’t. This government has ignored the pleas of Canadian NGOs [non-governmental organizations], opposition parties and the international community that all believe Canada could be doing more, should have been doing more.”
The point is that this incident brings home the fact that Canada and the International community have failed and people are forced to see an image of a small toddler, drowned and dead. Sad and shocking, what say Livepunjab readers?
