Over the course of the last few days, a three-year-old child in Kashmir has become a talking point for many on the internet. During an encounter with terrorists in Kashmir's Sopore area, a civilian was killed. A now viral photo shows the toddler sitting on his dead grandfather's chest. Police officials say that the child was rescued amid the attack, denying allegations from the family that the man had been killed by the CRPF officials.
Since then, the Sopore toddler has become a symbol of both the valiant efforts of the army, as well as a symbol of oppression. While some have used the picture to convey the 'horrors that the Indian Army is working to eradicate', others have quoted the family to say that the officials are the oppressors. What seems to have been forgotten is that this is a three-year-old child who has just lost a family member -- possibly even witnessing the incident.
But the use of children as the face of adult problems across the world is not new. Perhaps the word word 'use' doesn't quite fit for all the examples one can cite -- but the fact remains that many, many children across the world have become casualties in crises that they never had a role in. Over the years we have discovered many such symbols -- from the 'Syrian boy' to the photo of the 'Afghan Girl' to the more recent photos of migrant children in the US.
Here, we've put together a list to remind you about some of the children who became the face of global tragedies and movements:
1. The Afghan Girl
The National Geographic cover in June 1985 showed an adolescent girl with green eyes in a red headscarf staring with great intensity at the camera. Sharbat Gula was an Afghan child living in a refugee camp in Pakistan. This was at the time of the Soviet-Afghan war. The image taken by photojournalist Steve McCurry has since become a symbol of Afghanistan and the plight of refugees. Even more than 30 years later, it is a well known photo.
2. The Aleppo Boy
This is one of many photos and people from Syria who have become symbolic of the Syrian Civil War. Photos of five year old Omran Daqneesh with a bloodied countenance had emerged in 2016. Allegedly, he had been injured in an air strike. While the image triggered widespread condemnation, later reports are somewhat contradictory. Later, the boy's father had reportedly said that Daqneesh had been used as a "propaganda tool" by rebel forces.
3. The Syrian boy
Aylan Shenu was a child refugee who drowned while trying to escape the Syrian Civil War with his family and reach Europe. The three-year-old Syrian boy of Kurdish origin passed away in 2015. He had drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. The photos had been taken by a Turkish journalist, and soon received attention on a global scale.
4. The migrant child in the US
Amid US President Donald Trump's crackdown on migrants reaching the US in the hopes of a new lease on life, there had emerged a slew of pictures featuring children. One of these, a photo of a two year old Honduran girl crying as she looks up at adults who are not quite visible in the photo had sparked massive backlash on various platforms. The photo captions suggest that it was taken even as her mother was being searched and detained near the country's border with Mexico. TIME Magazine even edited the image to create its cover, where President Donald Trump is peering down at the crying toddler. Later reports quoted her father to reveal that the girl was not ultimately separated from her mother.
5. The Napalm Girl in Vietnam
One of the most iconic images from the Vietnam War, this photo of nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phúc with her face contorted with pain, running naked down a road after a napalm attack has become synonymous with the horrors of that particular war. It also won photographer Nick Ut a Pulitzer Prize.
6. The vulture and the little girl (who turned out to be a boy)
Another Pulitzer Prize winning photograph, this was taken in Sudan (now South Sudan). Reportedly, the frail famine-stricken boy had been trying to reach a United Nations feeding center about a half mile away, even as a vulture shadowed it, perhaps hoping for a meal. Photographer Kevin Carter died from suicide four months after getting the award. Following its publication in the New York Times, the photo had become a "sensation" and was abundantly used.
