kIDS ON THE BEACH
VOYEURISM
On 2nd September 2015, two-year-old Aylan Kurdi drowns off the Turkish coast. The photo of the dead refugee boy becomes a symbol of the European refugee disaster.
Images like this one play a major role in the perception of events. Years or even numbers of victims are perhaps learned by heart in history lessons, but it is individual images that are burned into our visual memory. The media have a special responsibility here. They have to weigh up the dignity of the dead against their journalistic responsibility to explain inhuman conditions. The photographer Heike Rost from the industry service Kress put it this way:
" It is part of the job of journalism to disturb the peace of mind of readers. This is uncomfortable and hard to bear; also for journalists."
Where does the duty to inform end, where does voyeurism begin? There is no clear answer to this question.
gRAB 'EM BY THE PUSSY
SEXISM
How does an American father explain to his teenage daughter, that the President of the United States is a man who has no respect for women? To cut taxes? Because Hillary was, after all, an absolute imposition? Or were the Mexicans to blame again?
And what justification would this father have, if his daughter is a victim of abuse? What picture of the world does a president carry, who boasts about his sexual assaults, openly positions himself against the right of women to their bodies, and constantly attracts attention in the media with sexist slogans?
I have no answer to that. I can think of no argument to justify this situation in any way.
I have given up looking for answers to these questions. All I can contribute is to describe what it triggers in me and an imaginary fourteen-year-old American girl when she has to hear the following words from the mouth of the most powerful man in the USA.
LIKE I GIVE A FUCK
HYPOCRISY
As much as one can and should criticize the policies of Donald Trump, it is sometimes advisable to reflect on one's behavior first. The European Union, of all countries, which constantly emphasizes the values of the European community and presents itself as a liberal moral compass, is in no way inferior to the American President in matters of migration policy.
Officially, the EU has put combating the causes of flight on the agenda. This was followed by the EU-Turkey deal to close the Balkan route, the increase in personnel at the border protection agency Frontex, and cooperation with the civil war country Libya to seal off the central Mediterranean route. The Libyan regime takes refugees from the sea and places them in Libyan reception camps where executions, torture, and rape are commonplace. An internal report of the Foreign Office even denounced concentration camp-like conditions.
The difference between the European deal with Libya and a fifteen-meter-high wall of concrete and steel on the US border with Mexico is only the hypocrisy of the EU and the ignorance of its citizens.
IT'S ALL HIS OWN FAULT
DOUBLE STANDARDS
If a woman goes home with five guys she met in a club, it's her own fault - right?
This wonderful phrase comes from the mouth of a friend whose opinion I value, and whose emotional intelligence I thought was high until this moment. The frightening thing for me is that this attitude is deep in the minds of many men and unfortunately also women. And not only in old white men from another time, prejudiced policemen or sexless mummy's boy - but in the minds of our friends, family, and neighbors.
Why am I to blame as a woman, because too many men obviously can't operate their dicks and brains? Must I, therefore, place every man under general suspicion? If, as a woman, I am to blame myself for my rape because I was naive enough to believe, that not every man I meet is a nasty, unfucked, impulse-driven rapist?
All right. In the future, I'm going to clubs and throwing myself at drunk men. Then I go to their house and steal all their shit. I mean, hey, it's his own fault. If he goes home drunk as fuck with a strange woman, he should know what happens. You should have seen the way this guy was dressed: Rolex, branded clothes, fat sunglasses. - He was practically begging to be robbed.
Would I get away with that argument in any court in the world? As a woman, probably not.
WHAT A PRETTY LITTLE MESS i'VE MADE
IGNORANCE
The part of the world we live in is still largely intact. As long as we can sell our waste to developing countries or throw it into the sea, nothing will change in the next few years. Because the effects that our behavior has on the world are to a large extent only visible to us when it is too much too late.
Instead of tackling this global challenge together, people are wasting their time blaming each other and complaining about the old, the young, the green, or the Chinese.
pICTURE CREDITS
