The true story of Aylan Kurdi

Blogs have been posting what they say is the true story of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian boy drowned in the Mediterranean, from a boatful of people who had concluded the risks of an unsafe boat on the water were less than staying where they were on land.

I won’t humour them by repeating the garbage blogs. They are entitled to their own opinions; they are not entitled to their own facts.

The ultimate injustice one can commit to Aylan Kurdi and his family is to omit the parts of his story which explain why he ended up dead on the beach, ]or to make up stories of your own]. The details matter, so please read and share:
1) Abdullah Kurdi, the father, was detained for 5 months in Air Force Intelligence in Damascus. While in detention, he was tortured and his teeth were pulled out. He had to sell his shop in Damascus in order to bribe the officers to let him out. This cost him 5,000,000 Syrian Liras (around $25,000)
2) After he bribed his way out of jail, Abdullah fled to Aleppo with his wife and sons, Alyan and Ghalib. The situation in Aleppo became dangerous due to the constant aerial bombardment, so he fled again to Kobani, his hometown.
3) When ISIS attacked Kobani last year, the family could no longer live in their hometown, so they fled to Turkey. Once in Turkey, the Turkish government did not provide them with assistance, so they paid almost $6,000 to secure 4 spots on a rubber dingy to the Greek island of Kos.
4) While on the boat, rough waters caused the boat to flip. The lifejackets they were given were fake. His sons and wife all drowned in front of his eyes, in his arms.
5) Kurdi had applied in June for refuge to Canada, sponsored by Abdullah’s Canadian-resident sister Tima, but was rejected. After Aylan's photo became a media story, he was reportedly offered citizenship to Canada. But he doesn't want to go to Canada or Europe anymore. He says he will go bury his family in Kobani and stay there to fight against ISIS, because everything has been taken away from him and he has "nothing to live for."
So if the world wants to no more Aylans on the beach, someone needs to do some combination of the following based on above:
    (1) stop torture and arbitrary detention by the Assad regime, 
    [(1a) stop Iran & Russia arming the Assad regime,]
    (2) stop the regime's aerial bombardment,
    (3) stop ISIS,
    (4) make travelling to Europe safe,
    (5) … accept more refugees.

Oh, and those other blogs arguing that other Middle Eastern nations and the Gulf States should accept refugees from the civil war?

They do.

Lebanon has 1.3 million Syrians. Jordan, Egypt & Iraq have 800,000 between them. And Syrians fleeing to the Gulf States are not defined as refugees by UNHCR. But there are quite a lot. Around 500,000 at last count

Got that?

Maybe you could tell those bloggers with their heads up their arse.

UPDATE: Why do refugees travel by boat to Europe, instead of plane?

[Hat tips Fabia Claridge-Chang, Thomas Lumley & Graeme Edgeler]