A List Of Loss: Newspaper Collects Tragic Tally Of 33,293 Dead Migrants

In July 2003, Elmas Ozmico died of blood poisoning in the U.K., where she had been seeking asylum after fleeing Turkey in the back of a semi-trailer truck. Fatim Jawara, a 19-year-old who played on the Gambian national soccer team and dreamed of playing in Europe, drowned off the coast of Libya before she could make it to Italy. Mamadou Konate, 33, did manage to make it to Italy — but the Malian migrant died earlier this year in a blaze that consumed a ramshackle camp in San Severo. Their stories are tragic, but they’re not uncommon. They comprise just a tiny fraction of the vast number of migrants and refugees who have died in the quest to reach safety in Europe, as Der Tagesspiegel made plain earlier this week. The German newspaper published a list of people who it says died while trying to immigrate to the continent between 1993 and May of this year, a list that contains exactly 33,293 entries. These entries offer the circumstances of each migrant’s death, as well as name, age, and country of origin, whe