The personal tragedy he experienced in 2015 became an international drama, with a shocking photo that went around the world: the image of his baby boy lying on a Turkish beach. Alan (and not Aylan, as his first name had been spelled in the press) was 2 and a half years old when he died, drowned, with his Syrian family who were trying to reach the Greek coast. Only his father survived the crossing, where Alan’s mother and brother also perished. “One after another they died drowned in my arms”, confides Abdullah Kurdi, who agreed to testify in “Complementary investigation”.
“A tragedy, but also an interpellation”, reacted François Hollande, then President of the Republic – without offering asylum to the survivor. The reaction of other European countries was not more up to the drama, believes Alan’s dad. “For a while, Europe started to accept refugees (…) but very quickly, they closed everything, put barbed wire everywhere. They humiliated the refugees.”
“I have a lot of compassion for Ukraine, but the whole world is witnessing this ‘double standard’. How Europe is able, on the one hand, to welcome Ukrainian refugees, then that on the other hand it rejects the Syrians, the Yemenis, and the citizens of many other countries at war.”
Abdullah Kurdiin “Further investigation”
Today, it is European leaders he holds responsible for the deaths of his wife and sons. “Of course I condemn them. If they didn’t do everything to block us, all this drama would never have happened.”
Originally from Damascus, the Kurdi family had fled the war in Syria. Today, Abdullah has settled in Erbil, Iraq. More than 200,000 Syrians live in this region of Kurdistan. “Right here, he says, everyone says the same thing. Why does the world welcome Ukrainians, and not us? We are human beings like them.”
Excerpt from an interview broadcast on May 12, 2022 after “Borders: billions, failures and barbed wire”, a document from “Complementary investigation”.
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