The body of a three year old boy washed up onto a beach in Turkey. The boy who caused international grief was Aylan Kurdi. The Kurdi family story showed the tragic reality of refugees most miserably. The Kurdi family couldn’t live in Syria anymore because of the civil war, so they crossed the Syrian border. Abdulla, Aylan’s father, requested a sanctuary from the Canadian government to go to Canada, where his sister emigrated, but Canada refused him because his identification was unascertainable. The Kurdi family decided to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Kos Island, Greece. They paid lots of money to a broker and, while they were crossing the sea, they met a violent storm. Unfortunately, the mother and the children were swept away in the rapids.
  Syria has been suffering from a civil war since 2011, and more than half of all Syrians have become refugees. At first, there was a protest against the government because some teenagers were arrested on a charge of a movement for democracy. Suppressing the protest became more intense and it caused casualties, so the whole nation of Syria asked the al-Assad government, the current government of Syria, to resign. The anti-government movement turned into armed forces, so the civil war against the government started in earnest. The war crimes, such as murder, torture, etc., against the civilians were endless, and what was worse, the government forces’ indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas exacerbated the civil war in Syria. Furthermore, the Islamic State, who actually captured parts of Iraq, has dominated the east and north sides of Syria. IS raised the fear level by executing hundreds of civilians in very cruel ways, such as beheadal, and it sparked the evacuation. IS is causing refugees by infiltrating the armed forces to countries in confusion, like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Nigeria, that are suffering civil war.
  The Kurdi family tragedy opened up the firmly closed gate of accepting refugees. The Prime Minister of the U.K., David Cameron, who used to say, “Accepting more refugees doesn’t solve the situation,” and was especially negative about accepting refugees, announced the U.K. will accept about 20,000 Syrian refugees over 5 years, after the photo of Aylan Kurdi was released. He added in the council that orphans and vulnerable children will be prioritized. Moreover, Germany and Austria announced an unlimited refugee accommodation, and the U.S. announced it will expand its the refugee acceptance limitation to a maximum of 100,000 people. The Taoiseach Enda Kenny in Ireland announced it will modify the existing refugees acceptance limitation from 600 to 1,800, saying, “Who will not grieve after seeing this photo?”
  Meanwhile, the European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker unveiled an EU quota plan that forcibly allocates 160,000 refugees to EU member countries. Western European countries, such as Germany, France, Italy, etc., welcomed this plan and urged other EU countries, but the stances of Eastern European countries were different. The Czech government insisted compelling allocation is not a good solution because most refugees don’t want to stay in Czechoslovakia but want to cross through to Germany. The Slovak President said only Christian refugees will be accepted and opposed the quota plan. The Romanian government announced that it is desirable to spontaneously decide the scale of accommodation. Even Hungary set up a wall on its Serbian border to block the influx of refugees. Of course, the Eastern European countries’ economics have fallen behind the Western European countries’ economics, but the main reasons they oppose the quota plan are the national security problems and religious matters. That is, the unidentified IS members could infiltrate other EU countries under the cover of the refugees with the purpose of terrorism, and the Muslim refugees could threaten Europeans’ Christianity. However, the EU quota plan’s scale of accommodation is not even reaching 1% of the refugees throughout the world.
  A Syrian boy refugee, who was waiting for a train from Keleti station in Budapest, Hungary, to Germany, brought the world grief once again. In an interview, Kinan Masalemehi, a 13-year-old boy said, “Just stop the war. We don’t want to go to Europe. Just stop the war in Syria, just that.” This interview has over 500,000 hits after it was posted on YouTube. As the boy wished, I hope the war will end soon.

By Min Tae-kwan
tk36@cbnu.ac.kr