Frustrated and desperate, migrants in Hungary begin moving west on foot
Frustrated and desperate, thousands of migrants stuck at two Hungarian train stations picked up their belongings and began walking toward the Austrian border Friday.
More than 1,000 who had been camped out near a train station in the capital of Budapest vowed to reach Austria on foot after authorities refused to let them on west-bound trains. Many chanted “Germany, Germany” — which they hope to eventually reach — while forming a line nearly a half-mile long as they marched out of the city, sometimes halting traffic, and began the 106-mile trek to Austria.
Hours later, the Hungarian government announced it would offer buses to take the migrants to the border, but there's been no indication whether or not Austria will allow them in.
The migrants are among the hundreds of thousands of people — mainly Syrians fleeing the Islamic State, but also Iraqis, Eritreans, Nigerians, Albanians and many others — who have fled war, persecution and economic hardship this year, with many bound for Europe.
About 22 miles to the west, hundreds escaped a train and broke through a police barrier in Biscke, where they had been held for the past day. Police were only able to block a small number of the estimated 500 migrants who broke away and began walking along the tracks.
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A day earlier the asylum seekers said they were tricked into getting on the train bound for a Hungarian refugee camp when they thought it was going toward Western Europe. Surrounded by police, many refused to budge. The train was sprayed with the words: “No camp. No Hungary. Freedom train."
“The situation is so bad. We have many sick people on the train," Adnan Shanan, 35, from Syria, told the Guardian. "We have pregnant women, no food, no water."
Many hope to eventually make it to Germany, where asylum applications are more likely to be accepted. Those dreams could be dashed as Hungarian lawmakers approved measures Friday to further tighten the borders and prevent migrants from traveling to Germany. Among other new laws are jail terms for migrants found scaling the wall Hungary is building along its southern border with Serbia.
“We don’t need to stay here one more day," Shanan said. "We need to move on to Munich, to anywhere else — we can’t stay here. We can’t wait until tomorrow. We need a decision today, now.”
Countries across Europe have been struggling to fashion a cohesive strategy to deal with a refugee crisis on a scale not seen since World War II. The head of the U.N. refugee agency said Friday that Europe is facing a "defining moment" that required a "massive common effort" to deal with the largest influx of refugees onto the continent in decades.
Map of migrants' long journeys from Middle East, African turmoil
"Europe cannot go on responding to this crisis with a piecemeal or incremental approach. No country can do it alone, and no country can refuse to do its part," António Guterres of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said in a statement laying out a set of guidelines for efforts to deal with the crisis.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said Friday that the U.S. will provide $26.6 million to the agency to help provide food, water and other assistance to migrants traveling through Greece, Macedonia and Serbia, according to the Associated Press. The U.S. has given more than $4 billion in aid to those affected by Syria's four-year civil war, he added.
British Prime Minister David Cameron bowed to public pressure within the European Union to do more to address the growing crisis, promising that "thousands more" Syrian refugees would be allowed into the United Kingdom.
"Given the scale of the crisis and the suffering of the people, today I can announce that we will do more — providing resettlement for thousands more Syrian refugees," he said Friday.
The development came as Abdullah Kurdi buried his sons and wife back in Kobani, the war-torn town they fled in Syria. The harrowing photo Kurdi's 3-year-old son, Aylan, washed up dead on a Turkish beach caused a stir around the world earlier this week.
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Kurdi has abandoned plans to flee the region now, Suleiman Kurdi, an uncle of the grieving father, told the Associated Press. “He only wanted to go to Europe for the sake of his children,” he said. “Now that they’re dead, he wants to stay here in Kobani next to them.”
Since 2014, Britain has accepted just a few hundred of the four million Syrians who have fled the conflict-ravaged nation. Germany, by contrast, has already registered over 40,000 Syrian asylum seekers this year and is expected to absorb around 800,00 refugees and migrants before the year is out.
Cameron said Britain would focus its efforts on the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who are living — mostly in United Nations camps — in neighboring countries to Syria such as Lebanon and Jordan rather than those already in Europe. He said that approach provides them with a "more direct and safe route to the U.K., rather than risking the hazardous journey which has tragically cost so many lives."
The move may frustrate activists in Britain who have been calling for a far more aggressive interventionist approach to refugees already on the move or stranded in Central Europe.
Cameron made his announcement in Spain, where he discussed the issue Friday with his Spanish and Portuguese counterparts. He said officials would discuss the execution of these plans and the numbers of refugees the country will take with NGOs and partners. More details will be released next week.
Ireland also announced it would take more migrants, saying it would take in at least 1,800, triple its original plan set in July.
Germany and France are pressing for the EU to adopt a plan that would see refugees more evenly distributed across member states. The United Nations has urged the 28-nation political bloc to accept at least 200,000 refugees with mandatory participation from all member states.
