This child is a reminder to all mankind
MY MOST powerful memory as a small child on holiday was that of my father plunging his hand from the side of a jetty into lake water to grab the hand of a three-year- old child who was drowning.
His strong hands pulled the wailing child back from certain death and into the beautiful sunlight of life. Is there a time in the history of civilisation to reflect on what it means to be human?
Mankind has survived and thrived for millennia through a sense of collective help and commonality, first in small family units, then in communities.
The human race survives against incredible odds on this rare oasis, our shared home, planet earth. A visitor to our planet would classify our species as belonging to one world.
Is it the holding of power, land and religion that drives wedges between countries and individuals changing a collective ‘us’ to a ‘them and us’?
Have we reached a crisis point in light of the current mass migration away from war, persecution and conflict where we must ask ourselves: ‘Would you hold out your hand to save the life of a drowning child?’
We refer to ourselves as ‘mankind’: what has happened to the ‘kind’ element of that term? MARTIN CLARKE,
by email. IT’S very sad when someone dies unnecessarily, particularly when it’s a child.
It’s hard to say, but the father of the two children who drowned while trying to go to mainland Europe must accept some responsibility for their deaths as he had already reached the safety of Turkey after fleeing from Syria.
The man’s actions in taking his family on a flimsy boat from that place of safety was reckless, however desperate he felt.
We are responsible for our children and once in a place of safety, away from the dangers of war, one should not place one’s family in further peril.
JOHN WILSON, London. SHOULD Ireland take migrants? Yes, when we have sorted out the overcrowding in our hospitals, the homeless, and those who have lost their homes because of unemployment, etc, and are living in hotels and hostels.
And what about America? Why is it not been considered? After all their footprints are all over Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
J McCOURT, Dundalk, Co. Louth. THE reaction of some Irish people who are offering beds by the thousand to refugees/migrants teeming into the Western states of the EU is laudable, but short-sighted.
Do these kindly Irish people not realise that in a short few years there will no doubt be exponential numbers of migrants and/or refugees coming our way, from deprived and overpopulated Asian and African countries ( irrespective of those countries being in the throes of war – civil or otherwise)?
When that happens the offers of even 10,000 beds from the kindly Irish people (who have reacted quite emotionally to seeing that picture taken on a Turkish beach) will seem like a drop in the ocean.
By the way, people have short memories. It is just over 11 years since the ‘kindly’ Irish electorate voted and passed a referendum by 80 per cent, to exclude Irish-born children of migrants from becoming Irish citizens.
I don’t remember any of today’s leading ministers and other politicians actively campaigning against that referendum proposal which denied some Irish people what would have been their birthright up to the time the referendum was passed.
TOM BALDWIN, Midleton, Co. Cork.