Austria and Germany agree to take migrants from Hungary
BICSKE, Hungary — After misery, delivery. Hundreds of migrants, exhausted after breaking away from police and marching for hours toward Western Europe, boarded buses provided by Hungary’s government as Austria in the earlymorning hours said it and Germany would let them in.
Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann announced the decision early Saturday after speaking with Angela Merkel, his German counterpart — not long after Hungary’s surprise nighttime move to provide buses for the weary travellers from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
With people streaming in long lines along highways from a Budapest train station and one near a migrant reception centre in this northern town, the buses would be used because “transportation safety can’t be put at risk,” said Janos Lazar, chief of staff to the prime minister.
Lazar blamed Germany’s “contradictory communications” and the European Union for the crisis. He said Hungary had asked Austria to clarify its position on the migrants but had not yet received an answer.
The asylum seekers had already made dangerous treks in scorching heat, crawling under barbed wire on Hungary’s southern frontier and facing the hostility of some locals along the way. Their first stop will be Austria, on Hungary’s western border, though most hope eventually to reach Germany.
Hungarian authorities had refused to let them board trains to the west, and the migrants balked at going to processing centres, fearing they would be forced to live in Hungary.
Under European law, refugees are supposed to seek asylum in the first European Union country they enter. But many see limited economic opportunities and a less welcoming atmosphere in Hungary than in Germany, Sweden and other Western nations.
In what the Hungarian media called a “day of uprisings,” about 350 people broke through a police cordon and began heading to Austria, 135 kilometres to the west, on tracks leading away from the railway station. Surprised riot police scrambled for their helmets as the crowd surged from the front of the train.
One man, a 51-year-old Pakistani, collapsed about 800 metres from the station and died despite efforts to rescue him.
Those left behind, mostly women and children, were boarded onto buses and taken to the nearby asylum centre. Hours earlier, about 2,000 people set out from Budapest’s Keleti station for a 171-km journey to the Austrian border. At first police tried to block them, but they quickly gave up. By nightfall, the marchers had already covered about 50 km. Austrian police were making preparations at main border points, with reception areas and first aid facilities. Hans Peter Doskozil, police chief in easternmost Burgenland province, said those measures should be sufficient for the initial arrivals.
Also Friday, the Hungarian parliament tightened its immigration rules, approving the creation of transit zones on the Hungarian border with Serbia where migrants would be kept until their asylum requests were decided, within eight days. Migrants would have limited chance to appeal those decisions.
In Geneva, the UN refugee agency said Friday that nearly 5,600 people crossed from Greece to Macedonia a day earlier. That’s roughly double the already high 2,500 to 3,000 per day in recent weeks.
“That is a dramatic number,” said UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming, saying it was the highest she’s heard yet.
Earlier Friday, Antonio Guterres, the head of the UN refugee agency, issued a statement urging the EU to create a “mass relocation program … with the mandatory participation of all EU member states” for would- be recipients who clear a screening process.
He said a “very preliminary estimate” would be for the creation of at least 200,000 places to be added across the bloc.
The UN comments came a day after a round of recriminations among EU leaders. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said the human wave is a German problem, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the obligation to protect refugees “applies not just in Germany, but in every European member.”
Orban reiterated on Hungarian state radio Friday his determination to stop the refugees.
“Today we are talking about tens of thousands, but next year we will be talking about millions, and this has no end,” Orban said.
“We have to make it clear that we can’t allow everyone in, because if we allow everyone in, Europe is finished,” Orban went on. “If you are rich and attractive to others, you also have to be strong because if not, they will take away what you have worked for and you will be poor, too.”