Saturday, 23 June 2018

The unbearable death toll of Fortress Europe





The List only details refugees whose deaths have been reported: the toll is almost certainly far higher than 34,361. As international media coverage of the refugee crisis has taught us, many more deaths go undocumented. Migrants are lost at sea, or die in the backs of trucks; they are killed in perilous conditions in camps, or by far-right hate groups; or the extreme stress of their situation leads them to take their own lives.

“We have no way of knowing the actual number of deaths, but this does show there has been a gradual and very steady increase,” says Thomas Spijkerboer, professor of Migration Law at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. “The major significance of the List is in its signals. It shows that this has been ongoing for 25 years and the people who pretend to be shocked now should have been shocked a long time ago.”


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