Germany: Med migrant victim funeral held in Berlin as activists "shame" EU

German activist group the "Centre for Political Beauty" organised the burial of the remains of a 60-year-old Syrian-Palestinian, who recently drowned off the Italian coast during his attempted journey to northern Europe, in Berlin, Friday. The man was suffering from cancer and hoped to join his family in Germany to receive treatment for his disease. Dozens of Berliners attended the Muslim ceremony which took place in the cemetery of the 12 Apostles community. The Imam officiating the ceremony, Abdallah Hajjir of the House of Wisdom community, remarked that "we are all responsible" for these deaths and made a call "to all politicians world-wide" asking them "if they could do more" to avoid such tragedies. The burial comes as part of a wider project by the group that hopes to bring the problem of dead migrants to lawmakers in Berlin, and follows the burial of a mother and her two-year-old child on Tuesday. The programme culminates in a grand project that hopes to convert the area in front of the German Chancellery into a graveyard dedicated to "unknown migrants." The group plan to march to the Bundestag on June 21 armed with "flowers, shovels, pickaxes or even jackhammers," accompanied by industrial diggers. The move comes as EU nations discuss policies aimed at dealing with the crisis, which has recently seen unprecedented numbers of migrants attempting the dangerous crossing of the Mediterranean, which in turn has led to deaths of thousands of migrants. Up to 30 times more migrants have died making the crossing in 2015 than during the previous year, with 2014 breaking records itself for deaths in the Med.