The vigil will take place at 7:30 p.m. in the public green space in front of Baraka's Restaurant at 978 Main Street, The Record reported.
PATERSON -- In wake of the drowning death of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi in Turkey, a candlelight vigil will be held in Paterson on Saturday evening to remember refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war, The Record reported.
The vigil will take place at 7:30 p.m. in the public green space in front of Baraka's Restaurant at 978 Main Street, the newspaper reported.
A photo of Aylan's lifeless body in the lapping waves of a beach in Bodrum, Turkey has sparked international outrage over the plight of thousands of Syrian refugees who have died trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.
As reported by The Associated Press, Aylan, his 5-year-old brother Ghalib, and their mother, Rehanna, drowned earlier this week after piling into an overloaded boat in Bodrum headed for the Greek island of Kos. The boy's father, Abdullah Kurdi, was one of the few survivors.
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Aylan and his family had fled their home in Kobane, Syria because of the advance of ISIS, according to The Washington Post. The family had hoped to make it to Vancouver, where the boy's aunt lives, but Canadian immigration officials rejected an application in June, the newspaper reported.
Prospect Park Mayor Mohamed Khairullah, a Syrian-born emigre, told NJ Advance Media it was silence on the part of the public and inaction from world leaders that had escalated the situation.
"The Syrian refugee problem would not have reached this historical catastrophic magnitude if it wasn't for the silence of the world to the atrocities of the brutal dictator," Khairullah said. "People are risking their lives crossing borders of neighboring and faraway countries on foot or on rubber boats to escape the brutality of the (Bashar al-Assad) regime."
He added: "This will only end if the world decides to put an end to the Assad killing machine by taking him out of power or at the least establishing a no-fly zone. Eliminating Assad's ability to kill and destroy is the most effective solution to ending the refugee problem and to also ending the reign of terror caused by ISIS."
Justin Zaremba may be reached at jzaremba@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JustinZarembaNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.