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The UNHCR reported on 26 October that at least 3,800 migrants/refugees died in the Mediterranean Sea so far this year. It said this is the largest figure of deaths counted in one year in the recent sad history of  this sea. The figure for the year 2015 was given to have been 3,771 deaths. How many of the Eritreans? No one knows. Migrants reported missing in the past two years were reported to be 3,930. How many of them Eritreans? No count is taken for a fast emptying nation with a government that cares less about the suffering and loss of its own people.

The French newspaper Tribute de Genève reported on Thursday, 27 October, quoting agencies that the rate of death was one out of every  47 persons who tried to cross the Mediterranean from Libya to Europe during the current year. The rate was 1 death out of 88 for the e 330,000 persons who crossed the Mediterranean as a whole This route was described to have been "the deadliest" ever in record.

Some estimates give the figure of up to 30,000 deaths in the sea in recent years while trying to reach the shores of Europe for safety. But even Europe cared less at least until Lampedusa of 3 October 2013 when 368 refugees, almost all save six were Eritreans fleeing from Africa's most repressive regime.

And who will tell even an estimated figure of Eritrean deaths in the Mediterranean Sea at least during the past ten years?  No one. The regime in Eritrea, which has been there for 25 years since the country became independent, did not even care to take census of its own population let alone to try to know how many died in the deserts and the high seas.

 The last time Eritreans were counted in an official census was in 1931 when they were about 600,000. Today, after 85 long years, the count remains unknown: some estimates put the population at about  3m while UN estimates reach the figure of 6.5m. This is one indicator of the absence of a properly functioning government in that cares to take count of own people.