A sickening cartoon published in the controversial French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has caused outrage on social media, which depicts the drowned Syrian toddler, Aylan Kurdi, growing up to be a sexual abuser like the refugees allegedly involved in the assaults in Cologne.
Under the headline “Migrants”, the despicable image shows two salacious men with their tongues hanging out chasing two terrified women who are running away.
An insert at the top the cartoon contains the infamous image of the three-year-old Syrian toddler laying face down dead in the sand. The question at the top of the drawing stated, “What would little Aylan have grown up to be?” is answered at the bottom – “Ass groper in Germany”.
The insinuation that all refugees will grow up to be sexual predators has outraged many, but as expected, some people have defended on the premise of freedom of speech and expression.
Kurdi’s death on a Turkish beach last year galvanised public opinion, and the global sympathy for the humanitarian crisis put pressure on Western governments.
But public opinion has turned in some European countries after hundreds of claims of alleged sexual assaults by immigrants on German women on New Year’s Eve in the city of Cologne.
The cartoon was published a week after the anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris.
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Tweets by a number of prominent writers with a photograph of the Charlie Hedbo cartoon sparked intense debate about whether the cartoon is racist or a poor attempt at satirising media coverage of refugees in Europe.
