Chaos in Hungary as refugees are stranded at a train station

[Velar Fricative]

This is crazy.

At the link, there is also an interactive graphic showing which European countries are most affected.

www.nytimes.com/2015/09/03/world/europe/europe-migrant-crisis.html?_r=0

LONDON — About 2,000 migrants remained stranded near the Keleti train station in central Budapest on Wednesday, and hundreds of passengers were delayed overnight on five Eurostar trains after migrants blocked tracks near the French port of Calais, as Europe continued to grapple with a surge of desperate migrants.



In southern Europe, at least 11 migrants drowned when two boats sank after leaving southwest Turkey for the Greek island of Kos, Reuters reported, citing the Turkish news agency Dogan.



The developments served as a reminder that while much of the focus of Europe’s humanitarian crisis in recent days has been on the influx to Hungary, Austria and Germany, countries across the Continent are still struggling to deal with the increasing numbers.


Tens of thousands of migrants, buffeted by conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, have been seeking refuge in Europe, only to find themselves confronted with a patchwork of incoherent asylum policies across the 28-member bloc. At the same time, anti-immigrant sentiment, stoked by far-right political parties, is fostering a backlash in some countries, including in Britain, France and Hungary, where those parties have influenced the political agenda.


In Brussels, a senior European Union official said on Wednesday that the bloc would propose measures to set up screening centers for migrants and asylum seekers in Italy, Greece and possibly Hungary, and to distribute those deemed to be refugees among European states.



The Keleti station has become a focal point in the crisis, and on Wednesday it was still cordoned off to prevent migrants from entering. About 100 migrants erupted in protest early Wednesday at the restrictions preventing them from reaching Germany, a favored destination.



The demonstrators chanted “Go! Go! Go! Germany! Germany! We want freedom!” The riot police were put on standby, and uniformed police officers were seen rounding up migrants and asking for their documents at cafes and shops around the station.



Ahmad Saadoun, 27, from Falluja, Iraq, said he had been beaten at a camp elsewhere in Hungary after he initially refused to be fingerprinted.



Ramadan Mustafa, 23, a chef from Qamishli, Syria, seemed equally despondent. “We are sleeping in trash,” he said. “We don’t know what to do. It’s a matter of human rights. If they don’t do something about the situation, we are going to start walking. People are getting sick.”



The chaos at Keleti prompted the authorities to shut the station temporarily on Tuesday. Regular services eventually resumed, but no passengers were allowed on board unless they had the proper legal documents, effectively stranding many migrants.



Tamas Lederer, one of the founders of a volunteer group called Migration Aid that was started two months ago in Budapest, said that the government’s decision to close the city’s main train station to migrants had done nothing to stanch the flow.



“They keep coming, in the same numbers, and now they pile up here,” he said.



Mr. Lederer added that health issues among the migrants were becoming pressing. “At the beginning, a month ago or so, it was mostly foot problems from the long journey they had made,” he said. “But now, there are so many, we get people with diabetes, various illnesses and, with the building of this wall along the southern border, a lot of slicing wounds from people cut on the razor wire.”



More migrants arrived every hour from the south on Wednesday, wondering if they would be allowed to board trains or if they would need to make deals with the groups of human traffickers working the crowd or find some other way — by taxi, perhaps — to make their way out of Hungary and toward Germany.


The rules covering asylum seekers in the European Union, which are known as the Dublin Regulation, call for them to make a claim in the country where they first arrived or were registered. Hungary has been criticized by Austria for failing to register new arrivals, even as many of them have avoided any official recognition of their arrival there in hopes of finding refuge in Germany.



“The whole system is crazy,” Mr. Lederer said. “We cannot see any point to it.”



There were signs on Wednesday that Hungary was coming to grips with the situation. Two unofficial looking notices posted in Arabic appeared on the walls and columns of the hallways under the train station, where the migrants have been camping.



One notice briefly stated that Germany, despite recent reports that it was relaxing asylum rules, was abiding by the Dublin accord. But it was unclear who had posted the sign or if it was accurate.



The other notice instructed all migrants to report for fingerprinting and to apply for asylum, a process that could take months and offers no guarantee of approval.



In the interim, the notice said, asylum seekers would be taken to a camp, where they would have access to food and the Internet and could receive funds from Western Union.



Some have resisted efforts to send them to camps. Index.hu, a Hungarian news website, reported that about 100 migrants at Kobanya-Kispest, a station on the outskirts of Budapest, had refused to board trains to the camp. The police said in a statement that some had held children up in the air in protest and had demanded to be allowed to travel to Germany.



The migrants who died on Wednesday trying to reach Greece were believed to be Syrian, part of an influx of people who in recent months have poured into the Aegean coast of Turkey in hopes of traveling on to Greece and in that way gaining entry to the European Union.



In France and Britain, service returned to normal on the Eurostar on Wednesday morning. Hundreds of passengers were delayed on five trains, in some cases for hours, because of reports that migrants trying to get through the Channel Tunnel had blocked the tracks and tried to board or even climb on the roofs of trains near Calais.



The European Union will propose measures to address the migration crisis to interior ministers at an emergency meeting scheduled for Sept. 14, five days after the European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, makes his annual address to the European Parliament, in which he is expected to outline the plans.



In June, Mr. Juncker had proposed relocating 40,000 asylum seekers in Greece and Italy and a further 20,000 who are in camps outside Europe to other countries in the Continent.



“Some countries that were a bit reluctant,” Mr. Avramopoulos said, “have changed their mind because now they realize that this problem is not the problem of other countries but theirs as well.”

[iammalcolmx]

Hungary is ON MY LIST for putting up that fucking fence.

ETA: People trying to go through the Channel tunnel breaks my heart.

[miniroller]

As much as I hate that it took this long to schedule the overdue meeting to address this crisis, the last sentence really hits home that it might have been necessary. This isn't a Greece problem; this is a Europe problem. And very well could (should) become a world problem. Has the UN addressed this at all?

[underwaterrhymes]

I wish all of these news outlets followed Al Jazeera's lead and referred to these people not as migrants, but as what they really are - refugees.

[Cicero]

Sept 2, 2015 11:59:46 GMT -5 iammalcolmx said:

Hungary is ON MY LIST for putting up that fucking fence.

ETA: People trying to go through the Channel tunnel breaks my heart.

It's amazing how quickly they forget that it wasn't long ago Austria was dealing with a flood of Hungarian refugees across their border. Can you imagine if Austria had built a wall in 1956?

Edited because I know how to spell Hungarian and autocorrect hates me.

[Velar Fricative]

Sept 2, 2015 12:06:40 GMT -5 miniroller said:

As much as I hate that it took this long to schedule the overdue meeting to address this crisis, the last sentence really hits home that it might have been necessary. This isn't a Greece problem; this is a Europe problem. And very well could (should) become a world problem. Has the UN addressed this at all?

It already is. The refugees appear to be coming from Syria and Iraq, among other volatile countries. They didn't become volatile in a vacuum with no outside influence from other countries.

[ttt]

I have to say that I admire Merkel for taking a stand and taking the lead on this. Maybe reception to her awkwardly cold response to the Palestinian girl a couple months ago shamed her into action.

(edited for a better article)

www.dw.com/en/merkel-warns-that-refugee-crisis-tests-europes-core-ideals/a-18684091

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has pressed other European Union nations to do more to share the burden of this year's influx of migrants. Germany has taken more asylum-seekers than any other EU country. 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the refugee crisis facing Europe was testing the core ideals of universal rights at the heart of the European Union. She added that the migrant crisis presented Germany with a major challenge which would not be resolved anytime soon, and urged citizens to show flexibility and patience.

"We stand before a huge national challenge. That will be a central challenge not only for days or months but for a long period of time," Merkel said during a major press conference in Berlin, marking the end of parliament's summer break.
 
Renewed appeal for asylum quotas
Speaking to journalists in Berlin, Merkel also pressed for quotas to spread the migrants among more countries in the 28-nation bloc.

"If Europe fails on the question of refugees, if this close link with universal civil rights is broken, then it won't be the Europe we wished for," she said, urging other EU members to accept their fair share of asylum seekers.

No name-calling
Chancellor Merkel said that Germany needed more immigrants to help fill gaps in its workforce. A new immigration law was "in the interests of Germany," Merkel said. But she added at the press conference that Europe as a whole had to move forward and that its states had to share the responsibility for refugees seeking asylum.
 
"There's no point in publicly calling each other names, but we must simply say that the current situation is not satisfactory," Merkel said.

Merkel said that the Schengen agreement on freedom of movement could be called into question if Europe was unable to agree on a fair distribution of refugees.



Zero tolerance for those who reject new challenges
Merkel expressed confidence that Europe would live up to the challenge, pointing to previous challenges such as the 2008 banking crisis, the 1990 reunification of Germany and to its ongoing nuclear phase-out. Germany expects to receive 800,000 asylum seekers this year - four times more than in 2014 and more than any other EU country.
 

"German thoroughness is great, but what we need now is German flexibility," she added.
Merkel said that the "full force of the law" would be brought down on those who insulted, attacked or launched arson attacks targeting newcomers to the country. She was referring in particular to a series of attacks against and protests outside refugee shelters in Germany.

"There will be zero tolerance for those who call into question the dignity of other people," she said. "Do not follow those who call for such demonstrations."

Chancellor Merkel stressed that despite the increased attacks against asylum seekers there were far more Germans hoping to help the refugees than those protesting against the migrants. She also sought to draw a positive from the number of refugees hoping to end up on German soil specifically.
"The entire now world looks up to Germany as a country of opportunities and hope. That wasn't always the case," Merkel said.

[downtoearth]

Did you guys hear this today? I can't listen at work, but I think it's what I heard on NPR about Iceland citizens wanting to host 10,000 Syrian refugees.

www.npr.org/2015/09/02/436820838/iceland-considers-taking-in-more-syrian-refugees

[iammalcolmx]

Germany has been great during this crisis.