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Same story, just different faces

Wednesday 07 December 2016

The Independent

 

Section 2 /
Features

Same story, just different faces

A new photo exhibition reminds us of the lengths we have gone to in the past to help refugees  – and how much more we could be doing now. Chantal Da Silva reports

Children were forced to flee gunfire in the battle for Saigon during the Vietnam War
(Philip Jones Griffiths/Magnum Photos)

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Since the conflict in Syria began in March 2011, the UK Government says it has managed to resettle 4,162 refugees from the war-torn country. The Government says it is on track to meet its commitment of resettling 20,000 refugees by 2020, but even that number is a drop in the ocean when you consider that nearly 5 million people have been displaced by the conflict.

That's why Amnesty International UK and Magnum Photos are launching a new photography exhibition along London’s South Bank that aims to shine a light on the realities of those uprooted by conflict in the past and present – and show that the UK is capable of doing more to aid those in need.

Children in a refugee camp in Stenkovac, Macedonia struggle for a breath of fresh air in a makeshift dwelling (Cristina Garcia Rodero / Magnum Photos)

The exhibition, which launches today and runs until Sunday 18 December, will feature 30 striking images that highlight the challenges refugees face on their journeys to safety, from those who faced prosecution during the Second World War more than 70 years ago, to those who have been forced to flee Syria today.

More and more people are being forced into the hands of smugglers and into risking their lives on ever more dangerous journeys

It is part of Amnesty’s “I Welcome” campaign, which calls on the UK to share more of the responsibility in responding to the Syrian refugee crisis, including by providing safe and legal routes for refugees.

Thousands of refugees wait calmly for food distribution at the Sha-alaan One camp in Jordan (Chris Steele-Perkins/Magnum)

“Photography can be a powerful way of telling a story and these photos remind us that people have been fleeing conflict and persecution throughout history,” said Tom Davies, campaign manager at Amnesty International UK. “After the horrors of the Second World War, the international community made a commitment to provide sanctuary to refugees, yet its response to the current crisis has been pitiful.”

A group of boys from Promahi look out at the refugee ship SS Samos that evacuated children during the Civil War in Greece in 1984 (David Seymour/Magnum)

“Governments are responsible for ensuring the right to asylum, and ordinary people too have a vital role to play in welcoming refugees,” Davies added. “Today, across the UK and further afield, the British public are going to incredible lengths to show solidarity with and welcome refugees. We want and need the same attitude from our government.”

The Government refuses to share responsibility with others for hosting refugees, leaving some of the poorest countries to accommodate the biggest numbers

Images in the exhibition will be displayed on light boxes along the South Bank, with the earliest photographs coming from David “Chim” Seymour’s collection on child refugees in Greece in 1946, juxtaposed with Chien-Chi Chang’s moving photograph of a mountain of life jackets abandoned in Lesbos just earlier this year.

More than 250,000 Kurds fled from Iraq after a bitter counter attack by Saddam Hussein in the northern part of the country (Bruno Barbey/Magnum)

Others include Philip Jones Griffiths’s 1968 image of a child running from a bombing raid in Vietnam, as well as Lorenzo Meloni’s more recent photograph of a Syrian family standing in front of the rubble of a place that they once called home.

A destroyed plastic factory burns in the Khatba district of Tripoli in September 2011, where Qaddafi loyalists and rebels battled for Libya’s capital city (Moises Saman/Magnum)

Amnesty says the UK Government has failed to show effective leadership in addressing the refugee crisis. It hopes the new exhibition will serve as a reminder that the country has come to the aid of those in need in the past and should do more to rise to the challenge in the present.

Life goes on for Syrian families, mostly from Aleppo, who have been placed in a refugee camp in Vasariste near the Serbian- Hungarian border (Jerome Sessini/Magnum)

“There are historical examples of the UK playing a leading role in responding to refugee crises but now, while the Government refuses to share responsibility with others for hosting refugees, leaving some of the poorest countries to accommodate the biggest numbers, more and more people are being forced into the hands of smugglers and into risking their lives on ever more dangerous journeys,” Davies said.

The year of 2016 has been declared the most dangerous year ever for refugees trying to reach Europe. The UN Refugee Agency has said as many as 4,715 migrants have drowned, suffocated or been lost at sea on crossings over the Mediterranean this past year alone.

A family stands on what is left of their home in Kobani, Syria (Lorenzo Meloni/Magnum)

And of those left behind, more than 250,000 Syrian people have been killed since the conflict began in March 2011, with an estimated 13.5 million, including 6 million children, still in need of humanitarian assistance.

Rather than “raising its drawbridges” Amnesty says the UK should be sharing in the global responsibility to provide safe and legal routes for those still in search of sanctuary.

The ‘I Welcome’ photography exhibition runs from Wednesday 7 December to Sunday 18 December on London’s South Bank between Gabriel’s Wharf and the National Theatre