BACKGROUND
The father of a Syrian toddler whose drowning shocked the world buried his family on Thursday in the war-torn town they originally fled, as divided European ministers scrambled to agree a response to the refugee crisis. Pressure on EU leaders has intensified with the heartbreaking pictures of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi's body on a Turkish beach, after he drowned with his brother Ghaleb and mother Rihana while they tried to cross to Greece. Full story >>
THE CARTOON
The cartoon by Chappatte from Le Temps, Switzerland, shows a group of EU leaders (I identified David Cameron, Angela Merkel, and François Hollande holding the photo). They are crying (crocodile tears?) and one of them comments, "From now on, all the little drowned kids have the right to asylum".
VOCABULARY
Asylum (U) is the right to stay in a country, given by a government to protect someone who has escaped from war or political trouble in their own country. • The number of refugees seeking political asylum has risen recently.
COMMENT
This cartoon by Chappatte has a lot in common with the harrowing one by Peter Brookes from last Friday's Times. They both suggest that EU leaders are failing in the face of 'biggest test of humanity in decades' (as Amnesty International said even before the Aylan tragedy).
