NEW DELHI: Photographs escape every now and again from conflict, capturing the horror that the world has ignored till then. These, for varying reasons, strike at the collective conscience of humanity but are ignored by the concerned nation states in the knowledge that the images will soon fade out of public memory. And little corrective action is required, with the policy of all warring governments across the world being to hunker down until the crisis is over.

The Citizen brings to you some of the more ‘famous’ photographs that impacted on the world, but over the years have faded from public memory. The little Syrian boy Aylan whose body was washed ashore even as the seas took away his mother and two siblings as well, has brought home the tragedy of the war that has been forced on Syria, and the suffering of the people at the hands of the terrorists sponsored by world powers.

Qutubuddin Ansari became the symbol of religious violence in Gujarat in 2002, when the above photo showing him pleading for his life appeared across Indian and international media. Ansari eventually took up an offer to rebuild his life in West Bengal, as even though “normalcy” returned to Gujarat, he didn’t feel safe and continued to fear for his life.

This image of a little Syrian boy who drowned off the coastal town of Bodrum in Turkey after an overloaded boat overturned went viral this week. 3-year-old Aylan has become the symbol of the migration crisis and the Syrian civil war. His father, the only one in the family to survive as his wife and other son both too drowned, said, “Now I don’t want anything… even if you give me all the countries in the world, I don’t want them. What was precious is gone.”

An image of young boys who were killed on a beach in Gaza became symbolic of Israel’s attack on the Gaza strip last summer, that killed over 2000 people. The four boys were cousins and after spending nine days cooped up indoors, had wandered onto the beach to play, defying their parents who had asked them to stay in.

In the image above, a Rohingya man pleads with authorities as families take shelter on a typical boat used by migrants to escape the conflict-torn Rakhine state. The picture is symbolic of the desperate plight of Myanmar’s Rohinya Muslims whom the UN has termed “one of the most persecuted minorities in the world.”

This photograph of a little girl in Gaza putting up her hands in ‘surrender’ when the photographer who released it, pointed the camera at her tells it all. This went viral across the social media but has not stopped Israel from attacking the Palestinian children and women without provocation.

This image, dating to 1996, became symbolic of the genocide in Rwanda. The refugee boy was pictured shivering whilst travelling to Bukavu with several thousand others, part of a group of 20,000 refugees who made their way into Goma after a month of being on the road.

This image, taken in 2014, shows displaced people belonging to the minority Yazidi community, who have been targeted and enslaved by Islamic State militants. The image became symbolic of the plight of the Yazidis who fled in thousands to seek shelter on the Syrian border.

This is one of the several photographs of torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers after the invasion of Iraq. Some of these photographs were released by the Washington Post in 2004 and this one became symbolic of the abuse of all international agreements and laws by the American soldiers.There were many more photographs of this abuse that went viral on the internet but are far more graphic and horrifying that even this.