Deaths On The Walls Of Fortress Europe

According to an article on the Fortress Europe blog at least 13,341 people have died since 1988 along Europe's external frontiers. Some of their figures follow:

In the Mediterranean sea and through the Atlantic Ocean on the crossing to Spain, 9,409 migrants have died. In the Sicily channel 3,128 people died along the routes from Libya, Egypt and Tunisia to Malta and Italy, this includes some 2,051 missing presumed drowned. 125 other people are known to have drowned sailing from Algeria to Sardinia.

1.066 people died in the Aegean sea, between Turkey and Greece, including 592 missing, and 603 people died in the Adriatic sea, between Albania, Montenegro and Italy, including 220 missing.

Most of these deaths have occurred on makeshift craft or in overloaded craft supplied by people smugglers but migrants have also died sailing hidden inside registered ferries and cargo vessels, with 152 men being asphyxiated or drowned.

At least 1,677 people have died since 1996 crossing the Sahara along the tracks between Sudan, Chad, Niger and Mali from one side and Libya and Algeria on the other one. The data includes also the victims of the collective deportations practised by Tripoli, Algeri and Rabat Governments, accustomed to abandon groups of hundreds migrants in open desert border areas.

In Libya serious migrants abuses are also recorded. There is not any official data, but in 2006 Human Rights Watch and AFVIC accused Tripoli of arbitrary arrests, beatings and tortures in the migrants detention centres, three of which are financed by Italy. In September 2000 in Zawiyah, in the north-west of the Country, at least 560 foreigners were killed during racist putsches

In Eastern Europe 352 people have been found dead, travelling as stowaways in the trucks. 208 migrants drowned crossing border rivers, the majority in the Oder-Neisse, between Poland and Germany; in the Evros, between Turkey and Greece; the Sava, between Hroatia and Bosnia; and the Morava between Slovakia and Czech Republic. At least 112 other people have frozen to death in their tracks through the icy mountains frontiers, especially in Turkey and Greece. In the Greek border region with Turkey there are still mine-fields along Evros river and atleast 92 people have died there trying to enter Greece.

207 migrants were shot dead by border police: 35 of them were killed in Ceuta and Melilla Spanish enclaves in Morocco, 50 in The Gambia, 55 in Egypt and 32 in the eastern Turkey, along the Iranian and the Iraqi borders. Others have also been killed by French, German, Spanish and Swiss policemen, as well as in Morocco and Libya.

41 men have been found dead hidden in the undercarriage of the planes, and 27 people died in Calais or under the trains in the Channel Tunnel trying to reach England, while another 12 people died under other trains at other Europen borders and 2 are also known to have drowned crossing the English Channel.

See also: noborder.org/dead