The Observer view on UK policy on asylum seekers | Observer editorial
Sometimes, a tragic image or story appears set to shift the course of history for the better. The haunting photograph of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, washed up on a beach in Turkey, shocked Europe in September 2015. He was a toddler from Syria who perished alongside his mother and brother while trying to make the dangerous Mediterranean crossing. For a few weeks at least, it seemed as though public horror at how he died might propel the EU to take a more humanitarian approach on asylum. But in recent years, it has become more, not less, hardline, striking unsavoury deals with authoritarian regimes such as Turkey and failed states such as Libya to keep refugees out, regardless of the human rights abuses that are taking place in their detention centres.
The tragedy has spread to our own shores, as growing numbers of desperate people try to cross the English Channel, the busiest shipping route in the world, in little more than inflatable dinghies. Twenty-seven people drowned last Thursday, including a pregnant woman and three children. Their stories, like that of Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin, a 24-year-old Kurdish woman fleeing Iraq to join her fiance in the UK, are just starting to emerge. But there is little hope that they will engender a change in the political response.
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