Marking UN World Refugee Day on 20 June, Dr Helen Hintjens describes the 'Counting the Dead' event held on Scheveningen beach
Sunday 20th June marked UN World Refugee Day and the end of Refugee Week 2021. Today on the Scheveningen beach, 1 Zwarte Pad, near The Hague, the organization ‘Migrant’ organized a special event, Counting the Dead.
We were asked to stick to COVID rules, most of us seated, deep in thought. In the sand, more than 7,000 markers buried, some with names, most ‘unnamed’, representing the dead. Most migrants who died around and inside Europe did so anonymously, and often they are buried unidentified.
Some quoted lines float across the sand. The death of one is a tragedy, the death of a million a statistic, says one woman. Although Joseph Stalin is thought to have said this, his biographers dispute it. I always thought it was Goebbels.
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- Assistant professor