Framing the Refugee Crisis

Daniel Etter’s photograph of Syrian refugees overcome by tears is one of the most poignant images to emerge out of the crisis that is currently developing across large parts of Europe. Taken in the early morning on the Greek island of Kos, it shows a Syrian family hugging and holding on to each other as they just survived a death defying journey by sea from Turkey. Crammed with a total of 12 refugees though built for only four people, the inflatable rubber raft they were traveling on was within moments of collapsing. They where helped onshore by local Greeks who have become accustomed to the daily arrival of refugees. In an interview with the Guardian Daniel Etter describes the emotional impact this image had taken on him and how he helped out the family in the aftermath of this traumatic journey.

The story of relief and survival explored in the photograph must be juxtaposed with other images of the crisis that signify a horror so brutal and numbing that they defy any sort of logic. On Thursday last week 71 refugees were found dead in the back of an abandoned truck south of Vienna. They all suffocated to death as the truck was callously abandoned by the traffickers. Among the dead was a Syrian man, his wife and their four children. Unlike the survivors arriving in Kos, the 71 refugees suffocated to death do not have a face. Their bodies piling on top of each other are not represented by the mainstream media. The event is shocking, but the images accompanying the story are almost banal in their simplicity. The above photograph of the truck is typical for the type of image used by the media.

The photographic juxtaposition between survival and death in the refugee crisis is very clear. Survivors have faces, they have emotions, they have stories and names. The deceased, on the other hand, remain anonymous. Clearly, there is a risk representing the refugee crisis along these lines in the media. The “good” photographs are shared online and on social media. People will say: “look at this touching photograph of a Syrian man hugging his family.” By all accounts, it is a memorable photograph. Yet the photograph of the truck on the other hand will be quickly forgotten. In this specific context, photo editors run the risk of creating a photographic imbalance towards feel good stories, while the true horror of the crisis remains rather unrepresented. Recalling Susan Sontag’s well known passage in her book On Photography in which she describes seeing images of the Holocaust for the first time as a child, the question therefore arises whether or not images of the true refugee disaster should be more visible in the media? If the revulsion against the Holocaust is partially triggered by images of it, could the true scale of the refugee crisis provoke a more proactive response, not just by governments but also by citizens?

The decision to print certain “good” photographs and exclude those deemed too shocking also relates to how the crisis is framed in the media. In the United Kingdom for instance, the crisis is termed a “Migrant Crisis”. Even the left leaning Guardian or the widely respected BBC have adapted the term “migrant” to describe those people fleeing their respective countries and seeking shelter in Europe. The dictionary defines a “migrant” as “a person who moves from one place to another in order to find work or better living conditions.” By using the term migrant, British news outlets thus put the emphasis on an individual’s desire for a better life in economic terms for the main reason they wish to travel to Europe.

A quick glance at Daniel Etter’s photograph and the backstory to the image should quickly dispel any naive and ill-considered notions that these are “migrants” my any means of the imagination. Rather more accurately, these are refugees escaping from a war torn country. Unlike the term migrant, with its implication for a better living condition in the future, the term refugee puts an emphasis on the past, provoking the question “refuge from what”. The risk undertaken to make the journey from Turkey to Greece gives an indication how brutal the past of these people must have been. They were willing to chance with death, in order to escape their past.

One reason why the British media might prefer to stick with the term “migrants” is because a shift towards “refugees” from countries such as Syria, Iraq or Libya would ultimately shift the discussion towards the political conditions from which the refugees escape from. This, in turn, would put Anglo-American as well as European interventionism in Middle Eastern countries into the spotlight. A long delayed investigation headed by Lord Chilcott is expected to reveal that the British Government under Tony Blair essentially misled the British people in the build up to the Iraq war. The region has been a powder keg ever since this illegal and senseless war which killed hundred of thousands civilians. While Saddam Hussein might have been removed, many of his former military officers have risen to prominent positions in ISIS. Faced with the brutality of ISIS, Syrians and Iraqis escape by the hundreds of thousands – not for a better future but actually for pure survival. The NATO intervention in Libya proved similarly disastrous for Europe. Gaddafi has been removed but the country has descended into chaos with militant groups fighting for supremacy. In this chaos one particular industry is blooming: human trafficking. If European leaders want to tackle the refugee crisis, they need to understand its origins.

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