Led by the Center for Political Beauty, a controversial German collective of performance artists and activists, about 5,000 protestors marched onto the Kanzleramt, Angela Merkel’s residence in Berlin last Sunday.
Armed with wooden crosses, floral wreaths and three (empty) coffins the procession was prevented from accessing the chancellor’s front lawn by a heavy police presence.
Demonstrators carried (empty) coffins.
Photo: via Vice
Unable to access the Kanzleramt, Der Spiegel reports that the protestors settled for storming the lawn of the Reichstag, the German parliament, by tearing down a flimsy aluminum fence.
There they dug holes for the crosses which bore slogans such as “EU Kills” and “Borders Kill.” Many participants were dressed in black.
Police arrested some 91 protesters on charges of trespassing, breach of peace, criminal damage, assault, and offense.
Protestors push over a fence to access the Reichstag Lawn
Photo: via Vice
Last week the group announced a plan to turn the German leader’s front lawn into a cemetery for migrants who drowned in the Mediterranean.
Unsurprisingly this was forbidden by the Police and officers searched all vehicles and coffins prior to the demonstration.
Participants buried headstones and crosses into the grass causing € 10,000 ($11,200) in damages
Photo: via Vice
The German government’s commissioner for refugees, State Secretary Aydan Özoguz, criticized the collective, telling Die Welt “With all due respect for the anger of the activists in the face of thousands of refugees that drowned in the Mediterranean; to stage a spectacle by burying corpses surpasses a moral boundary.”
“Such actions exceed the limits of piety,” the chairman of the Bundestag Committee on Internal Affairs, Wolfgang Bosbach, said in agreement. He added that it was regrettable “that the important and sensitive topic of refugee protection was being treated in this way.”
About 90 protestors were arrested.
Photo: via Vice
“It is immoral to dump the dead European migrants into massgraves, stack them in refrigerated warehouse for months (as happened in Italy) or to even hastily bury them in ordinary landscapes (as happened in Greece),” Tilda Rosenfeld, of the Center for Political Beauty, told artnet News in an email.
“It is not, immoral, however, to identify the dead, get in touch with their relatives and, with their compliance, bring them to the heart of Europe in order to give them a dignified burial,” she added.