Eva Bradley: Tragic image should shock us into action

Eva Bradley

NERO fiddled while Rome burned and I fear the same thing is happening right now in New Zealand as we wait for due process before stepping up and helping with the Syrian crisis.

As the bodies of babies continue to wash up on beaches and thousands of ordinary people just like you and me keep taking unspeakable risks in favour of staying put in their homes, the people who need to stand up and make change happen are flapping about wondering if it's "right".

John Key initially stood firm on the current refugee quota pending one of the Government's ever-present "reviews" on the matter. So many reviews, commissions of inquiry and investigations are initiated that it is hard to imagine there's much time left over for action when it matters.

Recently the PM has softened his stance on accepting emergency refugees saying instead that - pending the omnipresent "advice" - we would have to be "absolutely sure that it's the right thing to do".

John Key may be the leader of our country but he's also a father. As a mother, I simply don't see how he and other decision makers can waste time hand-wringing and meeting with advisers in the face of what is now being called the biggest humanitarian crisis since World War II.

The problem with these sorts of labels, though, is that they are intellectually shocking but personally irrelevant. I have been watching the crisis unfold through the media for a long time but have felt divorced from the reality of what the Syrians are going through because the problem is just so massive.

Huge crowds of refugees clamouring at train stations and wide shots of sinking boats shock, but anyone who watches the news on a regular basis is used to being shocked. Shocking just isn't any more.

Until this week. The graphic image of a small toddler not unlike my own lying face down in the sand as though he were fast asleep has shaken people out of apathy.

Hours earlier, a loving mum or dad had carefully pulled on the toddler's red T-shirt and blue shorts and asked him to stop wriggling while his Velcro sneakers were slid onto his feet.

Now he was dead. Washed up on a beach alone. The hopes and dreams his parents had for him swept away like the tide that brought him in.

Is there any doubt that opening up our borders to give people like this a chance at life is right? Is there time to even consider if it's right?

Why is it that if you are a citizen of a (lucky) country you have the right to a warm home, education, healthcare and handouts when needed, but if you are a citizen of the world, you don't even have the right to life?

I feel it's time we acknowledged our obligations as one human to another, not as one New Zealander to a Syrian.

It is not race, language or politics that make us different from each other. It is simply the accident of birth.

The little boy dead on the beach and my own little boy in his world of comfort and privilege are separated simply by where they popped out on the planet " one born to loving parents in political stability, the other to loving parents in political anarchy.

How many other little boys will wash up on the same shores before we are prepared to share the good fortune of our birth with those who drew the short straw?

-Eva Bradley is a columnist and photographer.