Austria, Germany agree to accept refugees
HUNGARY | BICSKE — 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 early-morning 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 travelers from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
With people streaming in long lines along highways from a Budapest train station and near a migrant reception center, the buses would be used because “transportation safety can’t be put at risk,” said Janos Lazar, chief of staff to Hungary’s prime minister.
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 centers, fearing they would be forced to remain 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 Friday and began walking to Austria, 85 miles to the west, on tracks leading away from the railway station.
Hours earlier, about 2,000 people set out from Budapest’s Keleti station for a 106-mile trek to the Austrian border. At first police tried to block them, but they quickly gave up. By nightfall, the marchers had covered about 30 miles.
Along the way, some met with gestures of support. Many flashed the V-sign for victory, while some handed out bottles of water.
In Syria, a man whose family died when a small rubber boat capsized during a desperate voyage from Turkey to Greece, buried his wife and two sons in their hometown of Kobani. Photos of the body of Abdullah Kurdi’s 3-year-old son after it washed up on the beach drew the world’s attention to the dangers faced by those fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. “He only wanted to go to Europe for the sake of his children,” said Suleiman Kurdi, an uncle of the grieving father. “Now that they’re dead, he wants to stay here in Kobani next to them.”