Hungary Seals Off Budapest Train Station to Migrants and Refugees
A large crowd staged a protest outside the station a day after thousands of migrants and refugees were allowed onto trains bound for Germany and Austria.
VICE News is closely watching the international migrant crisis. Check out the Open Water bloghere.The Keleti train station in the Hungarian capital of Budapest was shut down and evacuated Tuesday morning to prevent hundreds of migrants and refugees from boarding trains bound for Austria and Germany. Nearly 1,000 of them demonstrated outside the station, waving train tickets and shouting, "Germany! Germany!"
Advertisement
Migrants protest outside Keleti train station in Budapest.The station was reopened Tuesday afternoon but remained off-limits to migrants. Only those traveling with visas and ID cards were allowed onto the platforms.A steady stream of migrants and refugees, including many children, have been entering Hungary since the beginning of August, with an average of 2,000 of them a day. Many of the new arrivals sleep in makeshift camps just steps away from the train station.Hungarian human rights activist Bernard Rorke described the morning's protest as "peaceful but intense.""The spontaneous protest was very well organized by the refugees themselves," he told VICE News.Later that afternoon, the crowd dispersed, with many relocating to the nearby camps.
On Monday, hundreds of migrants and refugees left Budapest on trains bound for Germany, after the Hungarian authorities seemingly allowed people to board trains without visas. According to reports, four hundred of them who had left Budapest by train earlier in the day arrived Monday night in Bavaria, in the southeast of the Germany.Another 3,650 migrants and refugees reached Vienna by train Monday — a record number of daily arrivals. After so many of them boarded trains on Monday, Hungarian authorities decided to seal off the station.
"Many of those present outside the station this morning were Syrian refugees" who had hoped to reach Germany, said Rorke.Last week, the German government announced that it would allow Syrian refugees to remain in Germany, regardless of where they had entered the European Union. Migrants entering the EU are usually subject to the Dublin Regulation, which stipulates that they must file their asylum claims in the first European country that they set foot in."Hungary's political approach is clearly at odds with Germany's position," said Rorke. "The Hungarian government doesn't want migrants to come to Hungary, but at the same time, they stop them from leaving the country."
(Photo by Tamas Kovacs/EPA)
The Hungarian government recently completed the construction of a barbed wire fence along its border with Serbia."Hungary is trying to apply EU law, according to which everyone wishing to travel inside Europe should have a valid passport and a visa for the Schengen area," wrote government spokesperson Zoltán Kovács in an email to VICE News.The Schengen area is a "borderless" zone made up of 26 EU countries. Under the Schengen agreement, traveling from one country to another within the area is done without border controls.On Monday, some 20,000 people gathered in Vienna to protest the ill-treatment of refugees risking their lives to flee war-torn countries. Protesters carried banners reading "Human Rights Are Borderless" and " No Person Is illegal." The protest came just a few days after authorities discovered the bodies of 71 migrants in an abandoned truck on the side of an Austrian highway.
Advertisement
Demonstrators also rallied in Germany, which has recently seen a huge influx of migrants and refugees. Speaking Monday at a news conference in Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on other European countries to unite in finding a solution to the crisis."Universal civil rights have been closely linked with Europe and its history as a founding impetus of the European Union," she said. "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."On Tuesday, police in Munich tweeted that they were struggling to cope with donations for refugees arriving at the city's train station from Budapest, and asked the public not to bring any more items.
Please do not bring any more goods for the Moment.The donations at hand will be sufficient for the refugees present and arriving today.
Get the latest from VICE News in your inbox. Sign up right here.
By signing up, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy & to receive electronic communications from Vice Media Group, which may include marketing promotions, advertisements and sponsored content.
