Chaos as migrants flood into Europe
Politicians pressed to take action to prevent more deaths
HUNDREDS of migrants left Budapest aboard a packed train bound for a town near the Austrian border yesterday after two days of chaos symbolic of a European asylum system brought to breaking point.
Exhausted and confused, migrants crammed onto a train to the Hungarian border town of Sopron, clinging to doors and squeezing their children through open carriage windows.
Shortly afterwards the train was stopped, and there were chaotic scenes as refugees lay on the tracks after being ordered out by police before the refugees forced their way back onto the train.
Trains to Vienna and beyond to Germany were cancelled, making it unclear what would be the next stop for the migrants – many of them refugees from wars in the Middle East.
Thousands have died at sea and scores have perished on land in Europe’s worst migration crisis since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.
Images of a drowned three-yearold face down in the surf on a Turkish beach, one of at least 12 who died there the previous day while trying to sail for a Greek island, appeared in newspapers across the continent, increasing public pressure on politicians to take action.
“He had a name: Alyan Kurdi. Urgent action required – A Europewide mobilisation is urgent,” French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Twitter.
The images appeared a few days after 71 bodies were found in an abandoned truck in Austria last week.
The influx has strained the EU’s asylum system to breaking point, sowing division among its 28 nations and feeding the rise of rightwing populists.
The major EU countries have taken sharply opposing positions on whether to offer welcome. Germany plans to accept 800 000 refugees this year, while Britain has set up a programme to allow in Syrians that has accepted just 216.
“As one of the world’s richest countries, with good infrastructure, a viable welfare state and a solid budget surplus, we are in a position to rise to the occasion,” German Labour and Social Affairs Minister Andrea Nahles said at a briefing ahead of a G20 meeting in Turkey.
Nearly all the migrants arrive on the EU’s southern and eastern edges but press on for richer countries further north and west, creating havoc for a bloc that normally allows free movement internally but restricts it for undocumented migrants.
The train’s departure from Budapest followed a two-day stand- off with police barring entry to the station to more than 2 000 migrants. Yesterday the police stepped aside and the crowd surged past.
“We want to go to Germany but that train in the station, maybe it goes nowhere. We heard it may go to a camp. So we will stay out here and wait,” said Ysra Mardini, a 17-yearold from the Syrian capital Damascus, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt.
As the train departed, lawmakers were debating a raft of amendments to Hungary’s migration laws that the ruling party said would cut illegal border crossings to zero.
They provide for the creation of holding zones on the country’s southern border with Serbia, where construction crews are completing a 3.5m-high fence.
Hungary has emerged as a flashpoint, as the primary entry point for those travelling overland across the Balkans. Its right-wing government is among the continent’s most outspoken voices against allowing mass immigration.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban, in Brussels for talks with European leaders, said Hungarians and Europeans were “full of fear because they see that the European leaders… are not able to control the situation”.
In an opinion piece for Germany’s Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung, he wrote that his country was being overrun with refugees, most of which, he noted, were Muslims, not Christians.
“That’s an important question, because Europe and European culture have Christian roots. Or is it not already… alarming that Europe’s Christian culture is barely in a position to uphold Europe’s own Christian values?” he asked.
More than 100 000 asylum-seekers arrived last month alone in Germany. Prime Minister Angela Merkel has argued that providing refuge for those fleeing persecution and war is a fundamental obligation. The crisis has confounded the EU, which is committed to the principle of accepting refugees fleeing real danger but has no mechanism to compel its 28 member states to share out the burden.
Germany is in a good position to rise to the occasion