week 6--- 歐洲難民潮

Aylan Kurdi photos: Why the world needed to see them

 September 4, 2015 By Mark Micallef

The first time I received pictures of a dead child washed ashore was in April. It was sent to me by a Libyan coastguard contact. There was no subject line on the email so I didn't know what to expect.

I had seen photos of corpses being removed from beaches before but never of an infant.

It was an African boy, not more than one year old, and he had a haunting expression of terror on his face. So young, he had already experienced the worst life had to offer.

He looked nothing like my youngest son, who at the time was seven months old, but there was something about his clothes that made me feel as though I was looking at a picture of my child lying dead on that beach in Garabulli, Libya.

I've been writing about migration in the Mediterranean for more than 10 years. I've seen and heard all sorts of things from survivors during this time, but nothing brought the tragedy home like that picture. And that is precisely why I often choose to publish these images.

It's not straightforward. There's a fine line between projecting raw reality and making a spectacle of what is essentially a personal tragedy for the people close to the victim. But the truth is that hiding or sanitizing this truth in the face of this scale of ongoing death is just not sustainable.

More importantly, in the more than 15 years since the Mediterranean has been experiencing this phenomenon, politicians have only been jolted from their positions into a humanitarian action after public opinion was faced with the crude implications of Europe's unsatisfactory response.

Structure of the lead:
WHO-Aylan Kurdi
WHEN-September 4,2015
WHAT-an infant corpses was seen on the beach
WHY-the war caused too many refugees
WHERE- Libya
HOW-not given

Keywords:
1.corpse: 屍體
2.haunting: 不易忘懷的
3.Mediterranean: 地中海
4.straightforward: 明確的
5.spectacle: 景象
6.sanitize: 消毒
7.sustainable: 可持續的
8.jolt: 使震驚
9.crude: 簡陋的