In this Sunday, Aug. 30, 2015 photo, a Libyan Red Crescent worker pulls the body of a drowned migrant to shore as search teams collect bodies that have washed up in Zuwara, Libya (65 miles west of Tripoli) after two smuggling boats sank off the coast of Libya on Thursday. They found more than ten bodies — about 500 migrants were believed to be on board the two boats, according to rescue teams.(AP Photo/Mohamed Ben Khalifa)
PARIS — The 3-year-old boy could have been dressed for preschool. Instead he was lying face down in the surf.
Suddenly offers of money, meals and refuge are pouring in to help the hundreds of thousands of migrants surging into Europe. A single photo of a lifeless boy did more to galvanize public sympathy for Europe’s migrants than thousands of drownings in the Mediterranean or four years of Syrian civil war.
Whether Aylan Kurdi’s drowning death marks a turning point in Europe’s migration crisis depends on what European politicians do in response. So far, no dramatic new solutions have emerged.
Given the EU’s cumbersome structure and powerful national interests among its 28 members, any political change will be slow — if it happens at all. Ideological divides run deep, and suspicion of immigrants simmers.
Yet for many people from London to Athens to San Francisco, something clicked Thursday. There will be a before and an after, a collective memory of the image of a 3-year-old on a Turkish beach, that moment when the migrants’ plight became tangible and unjustifiably cruel.
Sweden’s foreign minister cried on national television. So did Australia’s most popular TV personality.
They were not alone. Tweets in a dozen languages shared pain and anger elicited by viewing the photo of Aylan, taken by a Turkish news agency and spread to cellphones and front pages the world around.
Many have taken action, too.
Parisians unexpectedly packed a meeting hall to offer rooms to refugees. A little-known French grassroots group trying to find housing for asylum applicants had 200 room offers Tuesday; by Thursday night it had 500.
Donors from around the world flooded the UN refugee agency with offers of aid.
“The image… has started a movement of civil society, of private individuals, and even of the tabloid press, to say: ‘Governments, we need to do more,”’ said agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming.