"What Would
I Do If The Baby Was Mine? "
By Ozan KÖSE
A baby, a victim of the shipwreck of a refugee ship
between Turkey and the Greek island of Lesbos, lying
on a beach in the Turkish village of Bademli January
30, 2016 (AFP / Ozan Köse)
1 February 2016 - When
I get on the pebbly beach, the first corpse I see is
that of a baby. It
must have nine or ten months, it is warmly covered
and wearing a hat. An
orange pacifier hangs his clothes. Beside
him lay another child, aged eight or nine years, and
an adult, their mother perhaps.
At the time, I do not know what to
do. I
take some pictures. I
walk the beach, I see the body of another child on a
rock. Eventually
I will have nightmares, I will be unable to speak
during hours, but at this moment I do not feel
anything in particular. Turkish
police are busy collecting other drowned washed up
on the beach after the shipwreck of the previous
night. There
are so many dead bodies ... I can not count them.
For the moment person
handles the dead baby. So
I come back to him and for maybe one hour, I remain
at his side in silence. I
have two children, a girl of eight and a boy of five
months. I
wonder what I would do if this baby was mine. I
wonder what is happening to humanity.
I find myself in the last few days
Cannakale region, on the Turkish coast of the Aegean
Sea, where massed thousands of Syrian, Iraqi and
other refugees seeking to win the Greek island of
Lesbos, located just opposite. The
situation is very tense here.
(AFP / Ozan Köse)
The day before, I went into the woods
where dozens of migrants retreated after facts
scammed by smugglers. They
made their paying a fortune to board a boat to
Greece, but at the appropriate time the boat has
proven much smaller advertised. Fearing
flow, migrants have refused to get. They
are faced with the smugglers, who threatened them
with firearms.
Refugees wait in a wood near the coast after
being swindled by Turkish smugglers, January 29,
2016 (AFP / Ozan Köse)
In this makeshift camp where they
warmed themselves around bonfires while looking for
a new boat for Europe, the refugees were happy to
see me, to tell me about their problems.Children
constantly asking their parents, "then, is when you
go up on the boat? "
(AFP / Ozan Köse)
Some of these people I've met in the
wood-they took place aboard the crowded tub which,
on the night of January 29 to 30, dark calm weather
a few hundred meters from the coast? Without
a doubt. Perhaps. Impossible
to know.
The wreck of the refugee ship which sank near
the Turkish coast, January 30, 2016 (AFP / Ozan Köse)
This Saturday morning I wake up with
a start at seven o'clock and heard many sirens of
ambulances. My
hotel is located right next to the base of the Coast
Guard. Something
serious must have happened.
The Turkish coastguard landed the body of a
victim sinking of refugee (AFP / Ozan Köse)
By the time I get to the base, a
shuttle just docked. Of
bodies wrapped in plastic bags are being unloaded. I
count ten. There
are also many survivors, including many women and
children. I
approach. They
come from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, but also Burma
and Bangladesh. They
are in shock. They
tell me that he was fine, the sea was calm, but they
were far too many on the boat. It
was a small boat designed for walking tourists, and
with a capacity of twenty or thirty passengers
maximum. When
she sank, more than a hundred migrants were piled on
board. Each
had paid 1,200 euros to smugglers.
Survivors await the bodies of their relatives
in the Turkish village of Kucukkuyu, January 30,
2016 (AFP / Ozan Köse)
The survivors were taken away by
police for questioning, and I decided to get closer
to the site of the sinking. The
tragedy occurred less than one kilometer from the
coast, near the village of Bademli. When
I get there, I see the wreck that engulfed half,
adrift, is now at about fifty meters from shore. The
pebble beach is littered with life jackets, personal
belongings and corpses rejected by the icy waves of
the Aegean Sea, so that this baby next to which I
find myself.
(AFP / Ozan Köse)
During my career as a
photojournalist, I covered crises, riots, attacks. I
have seen the dead. But
this is worse than anything.
Looking at that little body, I wonder
why it all. Why
this endless war in Syria. I
rage against all those politicians who caused this
tragedy against smugglers who send so many people to
death.
Then a policeman arrives, raises the
child and deposit it in a plastic bag. He
too is crying.
Ozan Köse is an AFP photographer
based in Istanbul. Follow
him on Twitter(ozannkosee). This
article was written with Roland de Courson in Paris.
(AFP / Ozan Köse)
L’Agence France-Presse (AFP) est une agence de
presse mondiale fournissant une information rapide,
vérifiée et complčte en vidéo, texte, photo,
multimédia et infographie sur les événements qui
font l’actualité internationale. Des guerres et
conflits ŕ la politique, au sport, au spectacle
jusqu’aux grands développements en matičre de santé,
de sciences ou de technologie.
Original
article - Translation by Google.
http://blogs.afp.com/makingof/?post%2Fturquie-refugies-naufrage-que-ferais-je-si-ce-bebe-etait-a-moi
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