Agencies in Budapest and Vienna Tuesday 1 September 2015
Hundreds of people – many fleeing civil war in Syria – travel to Munich after authorities in Austria and Hungary allow trains to move on
Refugees take German officials by surprise when they arrive on train. Link to video
Packed trains arrived in Austria and Germany on Monday as Hungarian police suddenly allowed migrants camped around Budapest rail stations to leave the country without visa checks.
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As men, women and children – many fleeing Syria’s civil war – continued to arrive from the east, Hungarian authorities let thousands of undocumented people travel on towards Germany, the favoured destination for many.
The European Union member - part of the bloc’s passport-free Schengen zone - had previously insisted that EU rules prevent them from letting visa-less migrants travel onwards to the west.
Frustrated refugees, pouring into Hungary at a rate of over 2,000 per day during August, had set up ever-growing makeshift camps outside the two main stations in Budapest.
Patience was running thin as the camps grew. “Germany Yes! Hungary No! Let us leave!” chanted hundreds of mostly Syrians during angry protests at the weekend, demanding that a recent easing of asylum rules by Berlin meant they could go at last.
The Schengen agreement requires refugees to seek asylum in the first country they enter under the EU’s Dublin accord, but it emerged last week Berlin had suspended it for Syrians who now be permitted to stay and apply for refugee status .
“First they don’t want to let us in, then they don’t want to let us leave,” a protestor said, a reference to the new razor-wire barrier Hungary’s right-wing government has built on its southern border with Serbia to keep migrants out.
Then on Monday morning the police vanished and the refugees, scarcely believing their eyes, were allowed to climb on-board trains headed west.
“I’m not going to let the train go, it’s far too full!” a flustered stationmaster shouted down his mobile phone beside one Vienna-bound train, his hand shaking. Minutes later, after a phone call to the police, he blew the whistle and the train slowly pulled out - next stop Austria.
Later, as the clock ticked closer to 9.10pm - the last train out - the crowd began to surge forward. A crush developed at the front and panicking parents passed toddlers overhead to aid volunteers, and safety.
Local police form a line at the Eastern (Keleti) railway station in Budapest. Photograph: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images
“Children are fainting, everybody push back three steps!” cried an aid worker in English and Arabic through a loudspeaker, as several dozen police moved in to hold the line.
Order restored for a moment, the police stepped aside, letting hundreds rush through onto the train, before they moved in again to stop the surge once the train was full.
“No more trains until the morning!” cried the aid worker to exasperated groans a few minutes later.
In line with EU rules, an Austrian police spokesman said only those who had not already requested asylum in Hungary would be allowed through, but the sheer pressure of numbers prevailed and trains were allowed to move on.
“Thank God nobody asked for a passport … No police, no problem,” said Khalil, 33, an English teacher from Kobani in Syria. His wife held their sick baby daughter, coughing and crying in her arms, at the Vienna station where police stood by as hundred of people raced to board trains for Germany.
Khalil said he had bought train tickets in Budapest for Hamburg, northern Germany, where he felt sure of a better welcome after traipsing across the Balkans and Hungary.
“Syrians call [Chancellor Angela] Merkel ‘Mama Merkel’,” he said, referring to the German leader’s relatively compassionate response so far to the crisis.
Late on Monday, a train from Vienna to Hamburg was met in Passau, Germany, by police wearing bullet-proof vests, according to a Reuters witness.
Police entered the train and several passengers were asked to accompany them to be registered. About 40 people were seen on the platform. Police said they would be taken to a police station for registration.
Merkel, whose country expects some 800,000 migrants this year, earlier said the crisis could destroy the Schengen open borders accord if other EU countries did not take a greater share.
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“If we don’t succeed in fairly distributing refugees then of course the Schengen question will be on the agenda for many,” she told a news conference in Berlin. “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.”
But it is far from certain her view will prevail when EU ministers hold a crisis meeting on 14 September. Britain, which is outside the Schengen zone, says the border-free system is part of the problem, and a bloc of central European countries plans to oppose any binding quotas.
Thousands of protesters demonstrate in the streets of Vienna. The sign reads: ‘Refugees welcome.’ Photograph: Franz Perc/Demotix/Corbis
Refugees who managed to board the trains heading west on Monday mixed with business travellers and tourists, some of whom were angry over the delays to their journey.
“I have a plane to catch from Vienna airport. I took the train because of the road checks and the traffic jam … and now this? Are you kidding me?” said Orsolya Jakab, a Hungarian accountant.
Outside Vienna station, thousands of supporters chanted: “Refugees are welcome here.”
“These people need help, they have come from a horrendous situation, we should not think twice about helping them,” said Ottwin Schober, a retiree from Vienna who had been moved by the discovery of a truckload of 71 dead bodies in Austria last week.
Austrian authorities have stopped hundreds of refugees and arrested five traffickers along the highway from Hungary where the abandoned truck was found near the Hungarian border.
Interior ministry official Konrad Kogler denied the clampdown, which includes increased checks on the eastern borders, violated the Schengen accord on free movement.
“These are not border controls,” said Kogler. “It is about ensuring that people are safe, that they are not dying, on the one hand, and about traffic security, on the other.”
At Munich, in southern Germany, police said around 400 displaced people had arrived on a train from Hungary via Austria.
“There are advanced reports that at least one or two further trains … are coming which could have a total of three, four or five hundred refugees on board,” police official Juergen Vanselow, told Reuters TV.
Two trains arrived from Hungary at Munich station carrying several hundred mostly Syrian refugees. Men, women and children smiled with relief on reaching German soil, and police shepherded them from the platform to a station outbuilding to be registered.
They were then taken to waiting buses outside, to be transferred to a reception centre in a former barracks in the north of the city.
Brothers (left to right) Zahed, Tawab and Based Fasni from Afghanistan wait in the registry at the train station in Munich. Photograph: Matthias Balk/EPA
Eighteen-year-old Syrian Mohammad al-Azaawi said he had abandoned his engineering degree and fled the country after being wounded by a car bomb. He showed reporters scars on his stomach.
His brother Ahmed said they had paid up to 3,000 euros (US$3,365) to make their way via Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary and Austria. The family had had to sell their house to raise the money.
“We escaped death in Syria. We want to stay here for a better future,” he said.
Trains carrying migrants reach Germany as EU asylum checks are waived | World news | The Guardian
