BERLIN — A 34-year-old woman was buried in a Berlin cemetery on Tuesday, thousands of miles from her home in Syria and hundreds from the shores of Italy that eluded her while she was alive.
Pallbearers carried a white coffin covered with a red shroud and flowers and laid it before rows of empty chairs, each taped with a sheet of white paper bearing the name of a German politician.
The woman perished at sea on her way to the Italian coast in early March. Her name was withheld to protect her surviving husband and three children, who are in Germany and seeking asylum. The woman was among the thousands struggling to reach Europe’s southern and eastern borders.
With her family’s permission, her body was exhumed from a plot in Sicily and buried in Germany as part of a political demonstration called “The Dead are Coming,” which was organized by the Center for Political Beauty, a Berlin-based art group that focuses on protest. The reburial was the first of several planned by the group and one of a number of events being staged throughout Europe to generate attention and pressure leaders to deal with a growing humanitarian crisis.
About 54,000 migrants have arrived in Italy this year, fleeing turmoil and war to seek a new beginning on the Continent, according to Frontex, the agency that protects Europe’s borders. About 1,800 have died at sea this year, and thousands more are in legal limbo, awaiting word on whether they will be granted asylum or given other lawful status so they can settle and work.
European leaders have failed to reach agreement on a comprehensive plan to accommodate the newcomers, with no solution to the political gridlock in sight.
On Tuesday, European Union interior ministers struggled at a meeting in Luxembourg to narrow the divisions over plans for a quota system that would distribute at least 40,000 migrants across the Continent.
The plans, which would force all 28 member states to take in migrants to relieve the burden on countries like Italy, were announced last month by the bloc’s executive arm but have since run into strong opposition. Germany supports the plan and has been working to encourage other European nations to sign on.
The interior ministers backed away from making any decisions on whether to carry out or scrap the quota plan, and they were expected to leave the politically explosive issue to European leaders who are scheduled to meet in Brussels next week. But with anti-immigration fervor strengthening nationalist parties, many European politicians have balked at committing to taking in more migrants.
At the same time, more groups are stepping forward to highlight the crisis, holding demonstrations to emphasize the human toll of inaction.
In Lyon, France, dozens of young people lay down in front of City Hall on Tuesday to call attention to a standoff over hundreds of Africans who have been stranded on the rocky border between France and Italy.
People seeking asylum in Austria and in Germany have organized marches in those countries to protest conditions they say are inhuman or unfair, such as laws that prevent asylum seekers from moving freely about the country while their applications are being processed.
The husband of the woman buried on Tuesday was unable to attend the ceremony because of such a law, said Philipp Ruch, 34, the artistic organizer of the Center for Political Beauty. The husband followed the burial through a video link the group arranged for him.
The funeral was attended by about 100 people and led by an imam. An empty child’s coffin, also white, was included in the procession but not buried. It was a symbolic acknowledgment of the woman’s youngest child, a 2-year-old who is believed to have also perished at sea, but whose body was never recovered.
“Our aim is to honor the dead by bringing them here and giving them a proper burial,” Mr. Ruch said. He said that part of the aim of the ceremony was to display a “parallel foreign policy for Germany.”
Critics, including many on social media, said the project was in bad taste and disrespectful to the dead. Others questioned the premise of using the corpses for performance art.
Germany’s Interior Ministry, which is responsible for refugee policy, declined to comment on the event, but pointed out that Thomas de Maizière, the interior minister, has been working to ease the plight of refugees and offer aid to both Italy and Greece, two of the countries that are straining most under the influx from the sea.
According to the Center for Political Beauty’s crowdfunding page, the group raised more than 34,000 euros, or $30,244, in a day to cover the costs of burials, estimated at €14,900 for each transfer and burial.
More burials are to take place later in the week, and a protest march is being organized for Sunday through the heart of the German capital to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s doorstep. The group plans to create a cemetery in the garden in front of the chancellery.
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