German Newspaper Publish Names of 33,000 Refugees Who Died Trying To Reach Europe

    

A German newspaper has published the names of 33,293 refugees and migrants who died trying to reach Europe.

Der Tagesspiegel listed victims' names, ages and countries of origin, as well as causes and dates of death, over 46 pages.

One entry is a 15-year-old boy who drowned on 15 November 2016 when a rubber dinghy he was on with 23 others sank while trying to travel from Libya to Europe.

Another tells of Iraqi migrant Talat Abdulhamid, 36, who froze to death on 6 January after walking for 48 hours through the mountains on the Turkish-Bulgarian border.

The newspaper said it wanted to document "the asylum-seekers, refugees and migrants who died since 1993 as a consequence of the restrictive policies of Europe on the continent's outer borders or inside Europe". 

The majority of the people on the newspaper's list drowned in the Mediterranean Sea.

Last year was the deadliest for migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean, with at least 5,079 dying or going missing during their journey, according to the UN International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

According to the body, a crackdown on the Western Balkan path and the EU-Turkey deal has forced refugees and migrants to choose more dangerous routes to Europe.