The Intolerable Death of Alan Kurdi

This chapter examines the role of compassion in the phenomenon of witness bearing by telling the tragic story of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian boy who drowned on September 2, 2015, along with his mother, five-year-old brother, and other Syrian refugees when their boat capsized after leaving Bodrum in Turkey. A series of photographs of Alan taken by photo-journalist Nilüfer Demir have come to symbolise a perceived turning point in the emotional script of refugee reception in Europe. Drawing on the iconic visual testimony of Alan Kurdi's death, this chapter explores how compassion was mobilised in critiques of the restrictive policies and lack of action by the UK during the refugee crisis. It first considers how compassion has been used to mobilise resistance to restrictive government refugee policies before discussing the responses to Alan's death and how they engaged with a discourse of compassion.