WATCH ABOVE: Thousands have died trying to seek refuge in Europe and escape the despair in their homeland. Others have been lucky enough to make it to Europe, but know they’re stranded as countries continue to argue over what do with them. Jeff Semple reports from Budapest.
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 migrants from the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
READ MORE:Will this photo help people grasp the desperation of Syrian refugees?
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 migrants this year. Such front-line 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.
READ MORE: Migrant found curled up in car hood trying to get to Spanish territory
“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.”
WATCH: Protesting migrants and refugees scuffled with police in Budapest when authorities tried to stop them from leaving the main international train station.
He said Hungary’s 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. Hundreds of other migrants stayed on the Serb side of the border until the protesters dispersed.
“I am a mother, I am Hungarian, this is Hungary, and they have to go home,” said 57-year-old protester Aniko Cserep.
Elsewhere on the migrants’ long route into Europe, 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 a 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 (14 miles) 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.
READ MORE: The European migrant crisis is only getting worse. Here’s what you need to know
Hungary’s police reinforced their positions outside the Keleti terminal as the volume of migrants arriving from Serbia grows by the hour, with an estimated 3,000 already encamped near the station. Officers working with colleagues from Austria, Germany and Slovakia were searching for migrants travelling on Hungarian 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 policy change may allow Syrian migrants to travel more freely to Germany’s capital because the most direct Hungarian trains to Berlin pass through the Czech Republic.
The Hungarian government didn’t explain why it permitted more than 1,000 migrants to leave Budapest by train Monday, but stopped the practice Tuesday and Wednesday, dashing the hopes of thousands who had bought train tickets. Hungary insisted it was complying with EU rules on migration by blocking the migrants.
Migrants “are not entitled to move freely within the European Union even after entering Hungary,” government spokesman Kovacs told The Associated Press. “If the migrants don’t comply with the very basic rules that are in place in the European Union, there is no solution to this problem.”
Kovacs also defended Hungary’s 4-meter-high (13-foot-high) fence being built on the border with Serbia and the tougher migration laws it expects to enact in a couple of weeks. Those laws would allow authorities to fast-track decisions on asylum requests and make it a criminal offence to cut through the fence or cross the border except at designated areas.
“We’re going to thwart any effort to come to Hungary by illegal means,” Kovacs said.
READ MORE: Hungary’s razor-wire fence on Serbian border proves futile in slowing migrants
The clampdown on train travel from Budapest has had an immediate effect in the migrants’ primary target country, Germany. German police reported Wednesday that only about 50 migrants arrived on the morning trains to Munich, compared to 2,400 on Tuesday.
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 migrants have reached Greece this year, chiefly from neighbouring Turkey, where more than 1 million live in refugee camps fueled by warfare in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Greek police also arrested six suspected smugglers in northern Greece after finding 103 migrants, including 19 children, hidden in a truck.
And in Vienna, police continued to interrogate the 30-year-old Romanian driver of a van that was discovered Tuesday containing 24 Afghans on the outskirts of the Austrian capital. Police spokesman Thomas Kleibinger said the truck’s rear doors had been padlocked to keep the Afghan men, aged 16 to 20, trapped inside, and the windows were sealed to prevent fresh air from getting inside the container. He said those inside were freed in good health because they had spent relatively little time inside.
In France, passengers aboard one Paris-to-London train said their service was suspended because migrants trying to climb aboard the train had damaged fire safety equipment. In tweets, passengers also described seeing migrants running along the roofs of another train near the French port of Calais.
READ MORE: Greek coast guard picks up nearly 2,500 migrants from sea in last 3 days
“Just before we got to the (Channel) Tunnel it was chaos. The lights went off and the air conditioning went off. It was so hot,” London resident Bridget Roussel said. “It was just disgusting. I’ve never experienced anything like that in my life.”
In non-EU member Iceland, a populist movement is challenging the government’s pledge to host only 50 Syrians, taking to social media to urge their government to do more. Some residents went online to commit to opening their homes to war refugees while others urged the government to turn a disused army base into migrant housing.
Naval vessels from several nations patrolled Mediterranean waters off the coast of Libya on Wednesday in hopes of preventing more mass drownings of migrants jammed onto flimsy smugglers’ boats. A Norwegian vessel carried about 800 rescued migrants to Cagliari on the Italian island of Sardinia.
One migrant on the Greek island of Lesbos spoke wearily about missing his family.
“They call me every day and they say to me that they miss me. And I say I miss you. But there’s no way to see them,” Afghan Abdullah Bakhshi told the AP as he walked along a Lesbos road.
WATCH: Global National’s Jeff Semple is in Budapest where hundreds of migrants are stranded near the main international train station
Comments