(MENAFN- Arab Times) Austria and Germany threw open their borders to thousands of exhausted migrants on Saturday, bussed to the Hungarian border by a right-wing government that had tried to stop them but was overwhelmed by the sheer numbers reaching Europe's frontiers. Left to walk the last yards into Austria, rain-soaked migrants, many of them refugees from Syria's civil war, were whisked by train and shuttle bus to Vienna, where many said they were resolved to continue on to Germany. German police later said the first 450 of up to 10,000 migrants expected on Saturday had arrived on a special train in Munich from Austria.
Austrian police said over 6,000 had entered the country with more expected, highlighting the continent's worst refugee crisis since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. "It was just such a horrible situation in Hungary," said Omar, arriving in Vienna with his family and hundreds of other migrants who poured out onto a fenced-off platform and were handed food, drinks and other supplies. In Budapest, almost emptied of migrants the night before, the main railway station was again filling up with new arrivals but trains to western Europe remained cancelled. So hundreds set off by foot, saying they would walk to the Austrian border, 170 km (110 miles) away, like others had tried on Friday.
Confrontation
After days of confrontation and chaos, Hungary's government deployed over 100 buses overnight to take thousands of migrants to the Austrian frontier. Austria said it agreed with Germany that it would allow the migrants access, waiving asylum rules that require them to register in the first EU state they reach. Wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags against the rain, long lines of weary migrants, many carrying small, sleeping children, got off buses on the Hungarian side of the boundary and walked into Austria, receiving fruit and water from aid workers. Waiting Austrians held signs that read, "Refugees welcome". "We're happy. We'll go to Germany," said a Syrian man who gave his name as Mohammed.
Another, who declined to be named, said: "Hungary should be fired from the European Union. Such bad treatment." Hungary insisted the bus rides were a one-off, even as hundreds more migrants gathered in Budapest, part of a seemingly unrelenting human surge northwards through the Balkan peninsula from Turkey and Greece. By contrast, the Austrian state railway company OeBB said it had added 4,600 seats for migrants by extending trains and laying on special, non-scheduled services. Hungary, the main entry point into Europe's borderless Schengen zone for migrants, has taken a hard line, vowing to seal its southern frontier with a new, high fence by Sept 15.
Hungarian officials have painted the crisis as a defence of Europe's prosperity, identity and "Christian values" against an influx of mainly Muslim migrants. Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Saturday Hungary would deploy police forces along its border with Serbia after Sept 15 and the army too if parliament approves a government proposal. "It's not 150,000 (migrants coming) that some (in the EU) want to divide according to quotas, it's not 500,000, a figure that I heard in Brussels, it's millions, then tens of millions, because the supply of immigrants is endless," he said.
For days, several thousand camped outside Budapest's main railway station, where trains to western Europe were cancelled as the government insisted all those entering Hungary be registered and their asylum applications processed in the country as per EU rules. But on Friday, in separate rapid-fire developments, hundreds broke out of a teeming camp on Hungary's frontier with Serbia, escaped a stranded train, and took to the highway by foot chanting "Germany, Germany!" The government appeared to throw in the towel, mobilising a fleet of buses to take them to the Austrian border.
Reaching a Vienna railway station on Saturday, migrants heard announcements for Germany-bound trains in Arabic as well as German. The scenes were emblematic of a crisis - about 350,000 refugees and migrants have reached the border of the European Union this year - that has left the 28-nation EU groping for solutions amid dysfunctional squabbling over burden-sharing. At an EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Saturday, the usual diplomatic conviviality unravelled as they failed to agree on any practical steps out of the crisis.
They are especially at odds over proposals for country- by-country quotas to take in asylum seekers. "Given the challenges facing our German friends as well, all of Europe needs to wake up. (The time for) reverie is over," Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said. "Now the continent of Europe is challenged. In this great challenge the entire continent has to give a unified answer.
Whoever still thinks that withdrawal from the EU or a barbed wire fence around Austria will solve the problem is wrong." British finance minister George Osborne said Europe and Britain must offer asylum to those genuinely fleeing persecution but also need to boost aid, defeat people-smuggling gangs and tackle the conflict in Syria to ease the migrant crisis. Pressure to take effective action rose sharply this week after pictures flashed around the world of the body of a 3- year-old Syrian Kurdish boy washed up on a Turkish resort beach, personalising the collective tragedy of the refugees. Aylan Kurdi had drowned along with his mother and brother while trying to cross by boat on a tiny rubber dinghy to a Greek island.
Legal Disclaimer:
MENAFN provides the information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.