Frustration mounts around Europe
Exhausted migrants clash with border officials, police as rules constantly shift
BUDAPEST, HUNGARY— Hundreds of frustrated migrants demanding passage to Germany jostled with riot police beside Budapest’s main international train station Wednesday as Hungary spent a second day trying to keep thousands of asylum seekers from spilling deeper into Europe.
Scores of officers pushed back the crowd, which shouted in Arabic and English to be permitted to march around the Keleti train station, which has become the latest focal point for European tensions over an unrelenting flow of people from the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
Passions also flared on Hungary’s border with Serbia as right-wing nationalist protesters marched to the location where migrants use a train track to walk into the country. Police formed protective circles around frightened migrants as the demonstrators from the hard-line Jobbik party screamed abuse at them.
The 28-nation European Union has been at odds for months on how to deal with the influx of more than 332,000 people this year. Such frontline nations as Greece, Italy and Hungary have pleaded for more help, while Germany, which is expecting to receive an EU-leading 800,000 asylum seekers this year, has appealed for EU partners to bear more of the load.
“We have to reinstate law and order at the borders of the European Union, including the border with Serbia,” Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said. “Without re-establishing law and order, it will be impossible to handle the influx of migrants.”
He said Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban will take a “clear and obvious message” to a meeting Thursday with EU chiefs in Brussels about migrants.
On Hungary’s border with Serbia, some 300 extremists led by Jobbik party leaders waved Hungarian and party flags as they marched to the border crossing and shouted at the frightened migrants, many of whom had just completed a daylong hike along the rail line, to go back where they came from.
Police escorted more than 50 migrants out of harm’s way and, in an unusual move that underscored the often chaotic handling of migrants in the country, permitted them to run free through a field rather than start the process of claiming asylum.
Elsewhere,13 people died when two small boats ferrying them from Turkey to the Greek island of Kos capsized. Turkish media said 12 drowned, including a woman and three children, while another person died later in hospital.
The Greek coast guard also recovered the body of a man south of the island of Kalolimnos.
It wasn’t clear whether that body was connected to the capsized Turkish boats about 22 kilometres to the northeast.
In France, cross-Channel trains resumed normal service Wednesday after serious overnight disruptions triggered by reports of migrants running on the tracks and trying to climb atop trains.
For its part, the Czech Republic announced Wednesday it no longer intended to prevent Syrians who had already claimed asylum in Hungary from travelling via its territory to Germany.
The Czechs previously had detained Syrian migrants, as well as those from other nations, for up to 42 days.
The Greek coast guard, meanwhile, said it had rescued 1,058 people in 28 Aegean Sea locations over the past 24 hours.
More than 200,000 people have reached Greece this year.
Greek police also arrested six suspected smugglers in northern Greece after finding 103 migrants, including 19 children, hidden in a truck.