The image stands
out even in the enormous flood of pictures that have emerged from the
trail of people travelling through Europe in recent weeks.
It
shows a square-jawed police officer with close-cropped hair nuzzling a
young Syrian boy. The photo, taken by BBC Radio 4 journalist
Manveen Rana
was retweeted and favourited thousands of times. Rana snapped the
picture near a crossing in southern Serbia, where a group of migrants
including Syrians and Iraqis had arrived after walking all night.
The
migrants had crossed two borders to get there. "There'd been a riot the
night before on border between Greece and Macedonia," Rana says.
"Thousands were stuck there for days in very difficult conditions, and
at 1 a.m. there was a huge riot and they stormed the border."
Some
of the refugees say they were beaten by the Macedonian police. They
then made their way north to Macedonia's border with Serbia.
"Everyone
arriving there was completely exhausted, especially the children," Rana
says. "The policeman had been there most of the day in the heat,
processing hundreds of people too, which can't have been easy either."
The refugees were being processed by police and
waiting for a UN bus to take them away from the border. That's when the
police officer spotted the small boy and embraced him.
"It was
such a human response to pick up the baby like that," she says. "A lot
of the Syrians were coming up to me and saying 'this is the first time a
police force hasn't treated us like animals.' Serbs on Twitter were
messaging me saying that it felt like a moment of redemption, because
they've been through war themselves."
Hear more on this story
Manveen Rana spoke to Radio 4's World at One -
listen to the programme here.
And
it was the echoes of the Balkan wars of the 1990s that prompted much of
the discussion about the photo on Twitter. "Bear this on mind next time
you thought Serbs are [genocidal] people," one Serb commented, while
another said: "Finally some truth about Serbs, that is the true face of
Serbia, not all 90's propaganda." There was also criticism of Western
media and of the BBC in particular - many Serbs feel they've been
unfairly portrayed in the media.
But in a reflection of how
divisions in the region still remain, some ethnic Albanians took to
Twitter to claim the officer as one of their own. "This an Albanian
police," one said. "Serbs would never do this." But others pointed out:
"There's no such thing as Albanian police in Serbia; he's an ethnic
Albanian and a member of Serbian police force."
Rana is now
travelling through Serbia with another Syrian family. On her Twitter
feed, she also noted that Serbian taxi drivers and other businesses have
been charging refugees huge sums of money. "Serbian taxi drivers have
been ruthless. They circle the area where #refugees camp and charge
extortionate sums at the end of the journey," she tweeted.
She was
surprised by the reaction to her photo of the officer and didn't quiz
him after taking his picture, but noted he could well be of Albanian
ancestry - there are many ethnic Albanians in the areas of southern
Serbia near the border crossing.
And on Twitter, some argued his
ethnic background didn't make a difference. "Whatever his nationality,"
one commented, "the policeman is a credit to his uniform :)"
Title : Why this picture of a migrant child being hugged went viral
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