The Stream

‘The dead are coming’: Germans dig mock graves for migrants who died at sea

Activists protest the EU’s refugee policy in front of Berlin’s parliament with #DieTotenKommen.

Thousands of German activists staged a mass funeral on Sunday in honour of the thousands of migrant lives lost trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe. The demonstration was an attempt to break the dismissive ‘out of sight, out of mind’ attitude protesters accuse lawmakers of having toward the tragedy in the Mediterranean. Protesters dug mock graves in front of Berlin’s Reichstag building, home to the country’s parliament, to highlight “crimes” stemming from Europe’s migrant crisis

 

The Centre for Political Beauty, the political art collective behind the protests, initially had plans to bury the actual dead migrants outside Chancellor Angela Merkel’s offices, but were prevented from doing so. In early June, activists in Berlin buried the body of a Syrian refugee who was allegedly brought over from Italy. In the video below, the group explains their aims: “We no longer leave the victims to rot in the Southern European cooling chambers. We are taking the problem to Germany”.