Migrants arrive at the coast on a dinghy after crossing from Turkey at the southeastern island of Kos, Greece,

I saw some pictures of the refugees crisis on CNN. It's sad to see that little boy laying on the beach dead. It's a human crisis to risk death by escaping the fear of death in your own country.

 

It is very sad. Canada and USA MUST take in these refugees.

Canada is a vast empty land.  They should take all the Christians and prosecuted minorities from Syria and Iraq and let the Islamists kill each other.

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By Mike MacDonald, CBC News Posted: Sep 04, 2015 12:13 PM ET, Last Updated: Sep 04, 2015 12:30 PM ET, Source

 

Residents of the besieged Palestinian camp of Yarmouk, queuing to receive food supplies, in Damascus, Syria on Jan. 31, 2014. (UNRWA via AP, File)

 

Manitoba is opening its doors to more Syrian refugee families and increasing its contribution to local settlement services organizations by $40,000.

 

"Manitobans, like all Canadians, are deeply distressed by the tragedy of forced migration currently unfolding in the Middle East," Premier Greg Selinger said Friday morning at the legislative building.

 

"We are committed to helping to alleviate the suffering of these people as best we can."

 

The refugee crisis in Syria has been ongoing since the outbreak of civil war in 2011 and according to the United Nations Refugee Agency there are now more than 4 million Syrian refugees.

 

Humanitarian assistance has become a lifeline for refugees unable to provide for their family's basic needs including food, water and health care, Selinger said.

 

"Syria's civil war is widely regarded as one of the worst humanitarian disasters of modern times," he said  "It would be irresponsible to turn our backs on the suffering of our fellow human beings.

 

"As a collective global community, we must do all that we can to try and facilitate a lasting peace."

 

International attention on the crisis was galvanized this week by photos of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, found lifeless on a Turkish beach after fleeing Syria with his family.

 

Kurdi, his brother and his mother all drowned when their boat, bound for the Greek island of Kos, capsized.

 

Their deaths have prompted many Canadians to ask how they can help refugees fleeing the war in Syria.

Syrian refugee children from the northern Syrian town of Tel Abyad sit under a make shift tent in Akcakale, in Sanliurfa province, Turkey. (Umit Bektas/Reuters)

Alan and Galib Kurdi are seen in an undated family handout photo courtesy of their aunt, Tima Kurdi. (The Canadian Press)

Handsome brothers. It's a shame they lost their lives so tragic.

10 moving photos of Europe's migrant crisis

 

The photographs of a three-year-old Syrian boy found dead on a beach in Turkey are among the most powerful to have emerged from Europe's migrant crisis.

 

But many other moving pictures have been taken over the years, illustrating the dangers of the migrants' journey or the treatment they have received on arrival in Europe.

 

1. Juan Medina was working as a photographer for a local paper in the Canary Islands in 2004 when yet another small boat arrived, packed with men from sub-Saharan Africa. As a Spanish Civil Guard patrol approached, it capsized and nine men drowned. Medina photographed two of the 29 survivors, Isa and Ibrahim, both from Mali, as they were pulled from the water. The shot won him a World Press Photo award the following year.

2. The Canary Islands was still one of the main destinations for African migrants two years later. By this stage the boats were often leaving from Mauritania or even Senegal, instead of Morocco - a perilous journey across 1,000km of the Atlantic. Many people arrived starving and dehydrated. This photograph taken on Tenerife's La Tejita beach shows tourists trying to help a young boy, and earned Arturo Rodriguez a World Press Photo award in 2007.

3. Two tiny Spanish enclaves on Morocco's Mediterranean coast, Ceuta and Melilla, exercise a magnetic attraction for people trying to reach Europe. Here the continent is just a razorwire fence away. Jose Palazon, who works for migrant rights group Pro.De.In Melilla, took this picture of one golfer in mid-swing, while another gazes at a group of men (and one policeman) perched on the fence. "It seemed like a good moment to take a photo that was a bit more symbolic," he told the El Pais newspaper.

4. Migrants passing through Djibouti, on the Gulf of Aden, sometimes save money by buying a SIM card from neighbouring Somalia on the black market. Photographer John Stanmeyer met a group of them standing on the coast waiting to catch a faint signal. "It communicated the universality of all of us," he says. "We really are standing at a crossroads of our collective humanity. Where are we going? What does it mean to be human?" The photograph won a World Press Photo award in 2014

5. By the time migrants reach the Mediterranean, most have already completed a gruelling journey over land. In the heat and dust of this desolate spot on the Syrian-Turkish border, Murad Sezer of Reuters would normally have encountered crowds of families with wailing children. But on one of his visits it was quiet - empty except for an abandoned child's cradle. "For me, it signified a kind of hopelessness," he says. "If its owners had felt hope, perhaps they would not have left it."

6. Massimo Sestini took this photograph from an Italian navy helicopter in 2014, but it was in fact a repeat of a shot he had taken in identical circumstances the year before. The new photograph, taken between Libya and Italy, showed that nothing had changed - but was also more striking because of the behaviour of the passengers. "I thought if I could get the right angle straightaway, directly above 500 people who have spent five days and nights on a boat, they would probably all look up, ask for help, wave - so this year I thought I'd try again and it worked." The shot won a World Press Photo award earlier this year.

7. In April this year a wooden sailing boat carrying Syrians and Eritreans smashed on rocks as it attempted to land on the Greek island of Rhodes. Greek army sergeant Antonis Deligiorgis, who was having a coffee with his wife on the seafront, dived into the waves and rescued 20 of the 93 people on board singlehandedly. One was Wegasi Nebiat, a 24-year-old Eritrean, pictured being brought ashore by Deligiorgis, on the left of the picture. Another, a pregnant woman who later gave birth in Rhodes general hospital, told staff she would name her son after the man who had saved her.

8. This photograph shows a Syrian man, Laith Majid, holding his son and daughter in his arms, after a journey from Turkey to the Greek island of Kos in an inflatable boat that been steadily losing air. "An entire country's pain captured in one father's face," tweeted @MaryFitzger, after it was published in the New York Times. "I am overwhelmed by the reaction to this family's tears of relief. This is why I do what I do," wrote German photographer Daniel Etter.

9. When Macedonia closed its border to migrants last month, after declaring a state of emergency, thousands spent a night in no-man's-land. The following morning they tried to push through police lines, leading officers to fire stun grenades into the crowd. AP photographer Darko Vojinovic captured this young father's despair. In the previous three weeks 39,000 migrants had been registered as they passed through the country en route for Serbia, and then Hungary - a member of the European Union.

10. This photograph went viral on social media a week ago. Who was the desperate man selling pens to support his family in the Lebanese capital Beirut, and how could people help him? He was quickly identified as Abdul Halim Attar, a Palestinian refugee from Yarmouk in Syria - and a crowdfunding campaign was launched on Indiegogo. It has already raised $181,000. Attar was overcome when he was told about the fund, says Gissur Simonarson, an Icelander who posted the original viral tweet. Attar's goal is to set up an education fund for Syrian children - and to return home from Beirut as soon as this becomes possible

In pictures: An emotional arrival in Europe

30 August 2015, From the section Magazine, Source

 

More than half of the 264,500 people who have crossed the Mediterranean in the hope of settling in Europe this year have arrived in Greece - and most of those have landed on the five Greek islands closest to the Turkish coast. Photographer Fernando Del Berro watched some of them arrive on the northern shore of Lesbos.

 

Fifty metres from the shore Fouad, from Damascus, raises his two-month-old baby above his head and cries "Freedom!" Many of the other passengers also erupt in cries of joy.

Closer to the shore, some throw themselves into the water before the bottom of the dangerously overloaded boat touches the pebbles

At the end of the 14km trip from Turkey, they are euphoric and cannot wait to be back on dry land - this time Europe, near the village of Efthalou.

For some the relief at the end of the risky crossing brings tears. Many tell stories of the Turkish coastguard firing water cannon in an attempt to fill the boats and make them sink.

Those who cannot swim find the journey traumatic. Children may need comforting. Tamara, from Syria, has salt water on her hair, face and clothes, but it will dry rapidly in the scorching heat.

The boats often arrive at the hottest time of day, and many on board are dehydrated as well as exhausted. Ojwan, from Aleppo, holds his two sons, sighing: "We're safe now."

A couple take a celebratory selfie next to the flimsy boat that carried them to Europe. Smugglers charge 1,000 euros for adults and 600 for children. One boat may carry 60 people.

Saad, from Idlib in Syria, holds his nephew while helping his sister to clamber up the slope behind the beach. Local volunteers often meet the boats, hand out water, and explain how to find buses that travel to the island's main town, Mytilini.

The climb up from the sea to the road is steep in parts of this 13km-long coast. To get to the bus it's a 10km walk that everyone must make, regardless of age or fitness.

For a long time the Turkish coast remains visible behind the travellers. Syrians fleeing a distant war, dragging babies and belongings, have become a familiar sight on the island.

The UNHCR and Medecins Sans Frontieres run four buses daily to Mytilini from two northern villages, Molyvos and Sykamineas. But up to 1,000 people may arrive on this coast in 24 hours, so some cover the full 65km on foot. Saad and his family are lucky enough to have seats.

Anyone who has left Kabul, Damascus or Baghdad and arrived on Lesbos is already a long way from home, but this may be just the start of a longer journey

DG, as I am reading your post piece by piece, it's unfolding like a real life dramatic movie and you're eager to know what will happen in the end.

These are the victims of weakling Obama failed policies in the ME.  He sat back and watch ISIS overran town after town in Syria and Iraq while he "led from behind".  The Europeans are equally to blame for toppling Gadaffi and others then walking off not thinking "mission accomplished".  It's very unfortunate seeing the innocents people suffering due to these misguided policies.

Extremely sadden to see the extremely slow response of many of the countries.

 

One can also remember that the then West Germany immediately responded  when Russia - the then Soviet Union - invaded the then Czechoslovakia in 1968. The escaped citizens were immediately accepted in Germany which provided superb accommodation, work permits and also training for those who did no speak the German language.

 

Similarly, Canada, US_of_A, Britain and other countries provided immediate protection, accommodation and other support to those in the said countries plus those who were, over time, transported to the said countries.

Was this done becsuse of non-muslim and skin color?

There are those views on the matter you raised, Cobra.

 

There are poignant issues at the time of the incidents, similar to the then Czechoslovakia, Hungary plus current incidents specific in Europe.