“I withdrew myself from commenting and posting on Facebook for the last couple of months, as I had to attend to other matters and had the feeling I started to have to keep repeating myself, atrocity after atrocity. I felt I reached a limit to how much one can point out the hypocrisy and ignorance behind all the injustice and hatred every day.

But after last week, when more than 1.100 men, women and children drowned to death in the Mediterranean Sea as they tried to reach a continent that didn’t want them and put everything in its place to keep them away, to keep them from leaving the hell the rulers of this continent has helped create in the rest of the world, and as I read the responses and the utter lack of sympathy, something snapped in me. Especially because my own grandparents came to this continent once by boat, as they were unrooted from their own homeland, but had the fortune to arrive here safely.

I had been staring at this picture for hours, but couldn’t find the words yesterday, until I read these somewhere else this morning: This is her. One of those looking for fortune. Stepped on a boat to steal all our wealth. To take away the care our dementing elderly need. To cause unrest in our society. That’s what these refugees do. Looking for their fortune. Pulling us into their misery.

Look at her. Maybe she was planning an attack. Because that’s what those people from those countries supposedly are like. Muslim, so terrorist.

Look at her. And realize that this is about human beings. Not about statistics. Human beings. With dreams and fears. With the will to pursue happiness.

A couple of hours before she was probably sitting in her mother’s lap. A mother that probably told her that everything was going to be alright. That she wouldn’t have to worry. That a better world was waiting for her. That somewhere there were people who would help. Because the world isn’t just war and misery. Because there were countries where people have it so good that they could share and allow others a little bit of their happiness.

Look at her floating. In her pink dress. Maybe her favorite one. And realize that her mother was wrong. A painful realization. But because of it not less true.

I never felt so ashamed of Europe. For all those complete idiots with their infantile, narrow-minded and onesided notions don’t even have the decency to let go of their xenophobe little world. To show a little respect for this big drama.

Shame on you.”