{"word_count": 120, "character_count": 814}
Tim Baster and Isabelle Merminod capture the painful goodbyes of the survivors of the recent Lampedusa tragedy and the victims’ families."On 3 October, a 17 metre long smuggler’s boat sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa. At around 3am around 550 people, mostly Eritreans, fought for their lives in the sea. Officials have given slightly differing figures, but some 370 bodies have now been recovered while 156 survived the sinking.Approximately 16,000 people died on the EU border from 1998 to 2012 according to UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants, François Crépeau.But EU politicians speak of further tightening border control as if turning irregular migration into a security issue will stop people fleeing from repression." (...)More : http://newint.org/features/web-exclusive/2013/10/18/