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Hungary Train Station Is Gripped by Chaos as Migrants Remain Stranded Hungary Train Station Is Gripped by Chaos as Migrants Remain Stranded
(about 5 hours later)
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. BUDAPEST — A ragged metropolis of thousands of weary and bedraggled migrants continued to rise Wednesday in the labyrinth of underground passageways outside Keleti train station.
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 Hungarian authorities, saying they were merely obeying European migration regulations, continued to keep migrants out of the station, despite having allowed thousands onto westbound trains on Monday.
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. At the same time, the desperate migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan — most of them hoping to reach Germany — continued to pour over the border from Serbia, despite the construction of a razor-wire fence that seems to have barely slowed them down.
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. And so, while European ministers squabbled and made preparations for a series of meetings to discuss the crisis, vowing to move toward some sort of common and humane response, the squalid city outside Keleti grew and festered, developing new suburbs by the hour.
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. “We are sleeping in trash,” said Ramadan Mustafa, 23, a chef from the Syrian city of Qamishli. “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.”
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. In the stifling heat, migrants sprawled on the tile of the underground plaza connecting Keleti to the nearest subway station; along the twisting passageways beneath the broad boulevards surrounding the station and, up at ground level, on the sun-baked concrete promenade at the huge station’s main entrance. There, television trucks provided a few patches of shade and hundreds of impassive police officers guarded every door.
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. Hundreds of thousands of migrants have been seeking refuge in Europe, only to find themselves confronted with a patchwork of incoherent asylum policies across the 28-member European Union. At the same time, anti-immigrant sentiment, stoked by far-right political parties, is fostering a backlash in some countries, including Britain, France and Hungary, where those parties have influenced the political agenda.
Ahmad Saadoun, 27, from Falluja, Iraq, said he had been beaten at a camp elsewhere in Hungary after he initially refused to be fingerprinted. The scene outside Keleti had become the latest focus of the crisis.
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.” More than 2,000 refugees — including a few elderly people, but most of them young men and women, weary families — clustered together on the station’s filthy tile floor on tattered blankets. A few had small tents. Children scampered through the maze of makeshift encampments or tried to play soccer on the few tiny patches of unoccupied floor.
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. Puddles of water smeared the tiles here and there, where people had tried to wash themselves. With temperatures in the 80s, the air smelled of sweat and human waste, and the incessant chatter bouncing off the walls made it difficult to find a quiet spot for a conversation.
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. On the outdoor plaza at the station’s main entrance, hundreds gathered, and there were regular protests where young men chanted (“Germany! Germany! Freedom!”) at the impassive police officers blocking the door, or waved slogans scrawled on empty pizza boxes.
“They keep coming, in the same numbers, and now they pile up here,” he said. Desperate migrants outside the station said they did not know what to do. Even the possibility of hiring smugglers to drive them across the border had become fraught since the gruesome deaths of 71 migrants last week found in the back of an abandoned truck across the border in Austria.
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.” “In Europe, they’re treating us like ISIS did, beating us up,” said Ahmad Saadoun, 27, from Falluja, Iraq. “Either take me to Germany or just send me back. I don’t care anymore.”
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. At this, Mr. Saadoun started weeping. A man standing next to him put his arm around Mr. Saadoun’s neck and kissed his cheek to comfort him.
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. Keleti was not Wednesday’s only flash point.
At least 11 migrants drowned trying to make the sea crossing from Turkey to Greece — from which they hoped to begin the arduous, overland journey through Macedonia and Serbia into Hungary —– several bodies washing ashore on the rocky beaches.
Overnight, train service beneath the English Channel connecting France and Britain was temporarily disrupted after reports that migrants were trying to walk the route or hide atop the hurtling trains.
One of the proudest glories of the European Union — the ability to travel freely, without border checks, from Estonia to Portugal — was splintering in the crisis.
Knowing that migrants determined to get to Germany and other Western nations and unable to board at Keleti would likely try other routes, police officers from Hungary and adjoining nations conducted spot checks on trains, demanding documents from suspected migrants.
Similar checks were being made on vehicles trying to cross the border between Hungary and Austria, causing huge traffic jams on the motorway that once sped happy East Europeans unimpeded into the heart of the West.
After more than 3,000 migrants succeeded in reaching Munich by train on Tuesday, only 150 arrived overnight, partly a reflection of the way the Hungarian crackdown has squeezed the human flow.
Still, the German authorities expected more migrants to find ways to evade the restrictions — and even hinted that, with a possible agreement on handling the crisis in the works, some might even be permitted to travel directly from Budapest in coming days.
Michael Müller, the mayor of Berlin, said the authorities believed that as many as 14,000 migrants were presently making their way through Europe, and the city was preparing hundreds of beds in tents, former army barracks and two hangars of the city’s shuttered Tempelhof Airport.
“Today and in the coming days we will have to react to the arrival of markedly more migrants in our city than we had expected,” Mr. Müller said at a hastily called news conference.
In Budapest, throughout the afternoon squads of police officers wearing surgical masks and gloves roamed the streets near Keleti station, going into Internet cafes and minimarkets and asking people who looked like migrants for documentation.
If the migrants could not produce evidence that they had entered the country legally or that they had been fingerprinted at the border — the first step in the official registration process — they were taken to an area behind the station and forced to be fingerprinted, according to several migrants and one police officer.
Tamas Lederer, one of the founders of a volunteer group called Migration Aid founded two months ago in Budapest to help for the migrants, said that the government’s decision to close the station to migrants had done nothing to slow the human tide.
“They keep coming, in the same numbers, and now they pile up here,” Mr. Lederer said.
Many of the migrants had valid tickets to board trains to the West, bought in a mad rush on Monday evening and Tuesday morning after the Hungarian authorities allowed some of the migrants to leave. But because they could not get inside the station, they could not board their trains. And because the tickets were nonrefundable, they watched as more of their precious remaining resources evaporated into the muggy air.
Passengers with the proper passports and documentation were still being allowed inside the station to catch their trains, and disembarking passengers were fed through a side entrance to keep them away from the migrant throng.
Mr. Lederer’s group had set up offices in an empty storefront at the north side of the subterranean hall, and dozens of refugees clustered at its doors trying to get news, supplies, reassurance. Another door a few yards away led to the group’s makeshift medical clinic where six volunteer doctors and nurses tended to the wounds and illnesses of the migrants.
“At the beginning, a month ago or so, it was mostly foot problems from the long journey they had made,” Mr. Lederer 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.”
Volunteers packed boxes of relief supplies — cans of beans here, shelves full of diapers and shampoo over there. Vegetarian meals for 2,000 people are produced every day, including rice and beans and various curries. A small shower room also provided some relief.
“The whole system is crazy,” Mr. Lederer said. “We cannot see any point to it.”“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. Several thousand people marched on Hungary’s Parliament building Wednesday evening to protest the government’s treatment of the migrants. Some of the marchers carried European Union flags.
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. “I find this government’s refugee policy unacceptable,” said Denes Nagy, 71, a physicist. “It goes against basic human values, European values and Hungary’s true values.”
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.”