BUDAPEST, Hungary — European railways were ground zero Wednesday in faltering efforts to contain the continent’s burgeoning refugee crisis, with thousands trapped in a makeshift refugee camp in the heart of Budapest.
Hungary played hardball with its unwelcome visitors for a second day, blocking train ticket-clutching migrants from traveling deeper into Europe while service between Paris and London was disrupted overnight after reports of migrants on the tracks.
The migrants, who have swamped every nook and cranny of public space outside Budapest’s Keleti train station, threatened to walk the 105 miles to the Austrian border if police don’t let them board trains to destinations in Austria and Germany.
“I will walk the whole way if I must,” declared 28-year-old Ahmed Shamoun, who deserted Syria’s army three months ago, leaving nine brothers and eight sisters behind in Damascus. “I could pay a taxi 500 euros ($550) to take me to Austria, but the police might stop me. I could wait here forever before Hungary lets me take the train.”
Hungary tantalizingly opened the way Monday, allowing more than 1,000 migrants to pack westbound trains — and inspiring a migrant surge to the capital — before it withdrew the option 24 hours later. The question of how to defuse the human gridlock is set to dominate Thursday’s meetings in Brussels between European Union leaders and Hungary’s anti-immigrant prime minister, Viktor Orban.
Hungary, which for months had permitted most applicants to head west after short bureaucratic delays, now says it won’t let more groups deeper into the EU and has cited EU backing for the move. Police blocking migrants from entering the capital’s main international train hub also stopped them from marching around the station, sparking scenes of anger but no violence.
“(Migrants) are not entitled to move freely within the European Union even after entering Hungary,” government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs told The Associated Press.
The tent city outside Keleti has steadily grown to an estimated 3,000 migrants camped out on the concrete plaza and subway entrances. Men sleep tightly packed together, using backpacks for pillows, as young children play in their midst, coloring with crayons or swerving around the carpet on tricycles. Rumors in shouted Arabic spread quickly, fueling surges of excitement and fury as people are told that the train station soon will reopen for migrants, or that police are about to attack and detain them.
Conditions around the transportation hub have grown increasingly squalid despite the efforts of volunteers distributing water, food, medicine and disinfectants.
Kindness and hatred
The fate of Europe’s asylum seekers, more than 330,000 of whom have arrived so far this year, is dividing Hungary as illustrated by two profoundly different demonstrations Wednesday night.
Around 5,000 people marched in Budapest in support of combating racism and strengthening state support for the new arrivals from the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
“The government is carrying out policies which are inhumane, un-Christian and lack solidarity,” said Veronika Kramer, a 35-year-old lawyer who took part in the rally along with her husband and sons, ages 5 and 7. Earlier, she had taken her boys to Keleti to meet migrants and give them bottled water.
“The boys needed to see them,” she said. “One of their kindergarten classmates told them that he hated the migrants because they spread disease.”
About 110 miles to the south, on Hungary’s border with Serbia, such anti-immigrant hatred was on graphic display. Leaders of the neo-fascist Jobbik party — the third-largest in Hungary — led about 300 supporters on a march that confronted the newest migrant arrivals with xenophobic verbal abuse.
Waving Hungarian and party flags, the Jobbik activists shouted into the faces of migrants walking into Hungary along train tracks that pass through Hungary’s border security barriers. The migrants, many of whom had just walked for hours from Serbia, appeared terrified.
Hungary’s government says it will pass a bill soon that creates new prison-style migrant holding centers near the border that allow for fast-track decisions, limited rights of appeal and easier deportations back to Serbia.
Stranded and denied
Meanwhile, across the continent, passengers on the Eurostar service between Britain and France were left stranded for hours overnight, and at least one train had to turn back, as authorities searched for migrants who had been reported on the tracks and atop the trains. Two other trains were canceled Wednesday morning.
The delays disrupted travel for up to 2,000 passengers and were just the latest in a summer in which migrants have frequently sneaked onto tracks near the Channel Tunnel, in the French port city of Calais, in an effort to stow away on a British-bound train.
And 13 people died when two boats ferrying them from Turkey to the Greek island of Kos capsized. Turkish media said 12 drowned, including three children, while another person died later in a hospital.
Scale of the crisis
About 11 million people (half of Syria’s population) have either died or fled their homes since the Syrian conflict began in 2011. About 4 million of that number have been forced out of the country. This summer alone, tens of thousands of desperate Syrian refugees made the dangerous eastern Mediterranean passage, motoring on boats from Turkey to nearby islands in Greece — the first beachhead of the European Union — and, from there, embarking on a sometimes-perilous land journey toward Western Europe. The Washington Post
