Photo by IHH Relief effort for Syrian refugees in Syria-Lebanon border
Precious little boy… you sleep so peacefully… wearing your best clothes to go to Europe where you would find a whole lot of toys to play with…and these tiny little shoes allowing you to gambol on that European soil that would welcome you and allow you to feel safe, far from the war, the bombs and the destruction ravaging your country; your country that had nothing to offer you but massacres, ruins and explosions since you were born… your arms along your tiny body… and your cute little face turned towards us… but your beautiful brown eyes are closed and your precious heart has stopped beating… Would we have the courage to hold your gaze if you could see us… we, who have nothing to offer you but our crushing shame…
We call ourselves human, we live in one of the world’s most developed countries, we have the luxury of living in a democracy and we are so blasé about it that we don’t bother to go and vote every four years and consequently, we leave the helm to those who have no care for your precious life… We let them define the fairness of our electoral system so that they make it way more unfair than it already is; we don’t care about our government bragging about not spending 100 million dollars allocated to welcome refugees who flee their countries to save their lives…
It is with this hope, the hope of allowing you and your brother to “live” that your parents embarked on that boat to try to give you the possibility of not dying under the bombs that governments of developed countries, among other belligerents, pour on your country with the excuse of fighting the state of darkness that has invaded your country, without bothering to save your precious live…
Precious little boy… you are gone and you will not hear our ministers talk shamelessly about the generosity of our refugee protection system. It is true that it was, once, the best in the world, but not anymore. Your mother and your brother are gone with you and your father,
disgusted with the inhumanity of all those countries that call themselves civilized, returned home, took you back home to return you to the soil that witnessed your birth. You carry so well your name… you carry on your fragile shoulders the name of the country that has been denied to you for so long.
Those so-called civilized countries don’t hesitate to make you and all the children of that part of the world pay the price of their disdain for that cradle of civilization, agonizing because of flagrant and unforgivable errors, including theirs. And they go so far as to choose to bombard you instead of protecting you, saying that this is part of the solution!
Canada cannot pretend any more that it did what it could to allow you and your brother to live and grow up in peace and your parents to enjoy one good night’s sleep without worries for your precious lives.
It is an irreparable loss for the whole world, like every death that could be avoided, and particularly for your aunt who tried so desperately to save you by bringing you to Canada. But it is also a loss for Canada. Canada could have protected you. You would have gone to school here and who knows, one day, you would have made Canada proud, like so many children of refugees who grow up in this country, contribute, and blossom within the mosaic of cultures that Canada, once, pretended to be… Does anyone remember?
