Migrants start on foot, end up by bus at Austria

Hundreds of migrants walk out of Budapest, Hungary, on Friday, snarling traffic as they try to make their way to the Austrian border 106 miles away. By nightfall, they had covered about 30 miles.
Hundreds of migrants walk out of Budapest, Hungary, on Friday, snarling traffic as they try to make their way to the Austrian border 106 miles away. By nightfall, they had covered about 30 miles.

BICSKE, Hungary -- After hundreds of refugees frustrated at being stuck at two train stations in Hungary set off on foot for western Europe on Friday, Hungary's government sent buses to take them to the border with Austria.

Early today, the first buses carrying them arrived at the Hungary-Austria border.

In a chaotic scene at the main border crossing on the road to Vienna, volunteers handed out water and bananas to the first busloads of exhausted but happy migrants. As they began passing from Hungarian territory through the border checkpoint, a few shouted, "Thank you, Austria!"

Austria announced earlier that it and Germany would let them pass unhindered. Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann made the announcement after speaking with Angela Merkel, his German counterpart.

With people traveling in long lines along highways from a Budapest train station and one near a migrant reception center in the northern city of Bicske, the buses were used because "transportation safety can't be put at risk," said Janos Lazar, chief of staff to the prime minister.

The asylum seekers already had made dangerous treks in scorching heat, crawling under barbed wire on Hungary's southern frontier and facing hostility of some locals along the way.

Just before 1 a.m. today, a man with a bullhorn began telling the migrants that they would be taken to the border and should take as much food and water as possible. Families began frantically packing their possessions. Be prepared to move, they were told.

The long line of regional buses began loading the migrants. Some were marked "chartered service" or "transit service." They were mostly rickety, Soviet-era buses in distinctive blue and yellow liveries.

People waited in long lines to board, and by 1:10 a.m., the first buses were on the move. Migrants waved happily to onlookers as they pulled away.

By 2 a.m., the police said, 40 buses had departed. By 5 a.m. at least six buses arrived at Hegyeshalom, Hungary, at the border with about 400 passengers, where the migrants, many cheering and clapping, were welcomed in the rain by volunteers.

Under European law, refugees are supposed to seek asylum in the first European Union country they enter. Once they register and apply, they must remain there.

Many migrants, though, see limited economic opportunities and a less welcoming atmosphere in Hungary than in Germany, Sweden and other Western nations.

In what the Hungarian media called a "day of uprisings," about 350 people broke through a police cordon and began heading to Austria, 85 miles to the west, on tracks leading away from the railway station. Riot police scrambled for their helmets as the crowd surged from the front of the train.

One man, a 51-year-old Pakistani, collapsed about half a mile from the station and died despite efforts to revive him.

Those left behind, mostly women and children, were boarded onto buses and taken to a nearby asylum center.

Hours earlier, about 2,000 people set out from Budapest's Keleti station for a 106-mile journey to the Austrian border. At first, police tried to block them, but they quickly gave up. By nightfall, the marchers had covered about 30 miles.

"This is going to go down in history," said Rami Hassoun, an Egyptian migrant from Alexandria who was helping corral the crowds on a six-lane highway to Austria, where the migrants were accompanied by a police patrol.

Subhi, a 17-year-old migrant from Damascus, Syria, was among those walking to Germany, even though he walks with a limp.

"I'm fed up," he said. "I'm going to walk all the way to Germany to get treatment."

Saleh Abdurahman, a Palestinian refugee from Syria who marched from Budapest, said he was set on escaping a Middle East made intolerable by wars he blames on the United States and Europe.

"We don't want to go to their countries because we'd like to be rich," he said. "We only need to be human beings."

Along the way, the migrants met with gestures of support. Many flashed the V sign for victory, while some handed out bottles of water to the weary travelers.

A small number made clear the new arrivals were not welcome.

"Go home already," one man shouted in Hungarian from a passing car.

Austrian police were making preparations at main border points, with reception areas and first-aid facilities. Hans Peter Doskozil, police chief in easternmost Burgeland province, said those measures should be sufficient for the initial arrivals.

Also Friday, the Hungarian parliament tightened its immigration rules, approving the creation of transit zones on the Hungarian border with Serbia, where migrants would be kept until their asylum requests were decided within eight days. Migrants would have a limited chance to appeal those decisions.

'Dramatic' increase

Across Europe, the surge of refugees and other migrants was described as "dramatic."

In Geneva, the United Nations refugee agency said Friday that nearly 5,600 people crossed from Greece to Macedonia a day earlier. That's roughly double the already high 2,500 to 3,000 per day in recent weeks.

"That is a dramatic number," said U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees spokesman Melissa Fleming, noting it was the highest she's heard yet.

Earlier Friday, Antonio Guterres, the head of the U.N. agency, issued a statement urging the EU to create a "mass relocation program ... with the mandatory participation of all EU member states" for would-be recipients who clear a screening process.

He said a "very preliminary estimate" would be for the creation of at least 200,000 places to be added across the bloc.

The U.N. comments came a day after a round of recriminations among EU leaders. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said the human wave is a German problem, but Merkel said the obligation to protect refugees "applies not just in Germany, but in every European member."

Orban reiterated on Hungarian state radio Friday his determination to stop the refugees.

"Today we are talking about tens of thousands, but next year we will be talking about millions, and this has no end," Orban said.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said Friday that the United Kingdom would take in thousands more Syrians, and Merkel has said it is a legal and moral imperative for Europe to provide sanctuary.

The migrant surge has attracted an international response.

Argentina's Cabinet chief said Friday that the South American nation is willing to welcome more Syrian refugees fleeing their country's civil war.

Anibal Fernandez said that the government eased the entrance of Syrians through a program begun last year, but he didn't specify how many of the refugees had arrived so far. He said the Syrians will be welcomed through the country's tradition of helping out during humanitarian crises.

"When you do something like this, it's a very honest act that springs from affection and solidarity," Fernandez said.

Juan Pablo Terminiello, legal associate at Argentina's office of the U.N. refugee agency, estimates that the South American country so far has welcomed fewer than 100 Syrian refugees. Leaders of the Syrian-Lebanese community, with an estimated 4 million people in Argentina, have asked authorities to speed up procedures so more of the refugees can enter the country.

Neighboring Uruguay welcomed 42 Syrian refugees in October. Under former President Jose Mujica, Uruguay initially agreed to receive a total of 120 Syrian refugees.

Current Uruguayan Foreign Minister Rodolfo Nin Novoa has said that a second group of seven families will arrive later this year.

Fernandez said he had been troubled this week by the image of a dead 3-year-old Syrian boy on a Turkish beach. The photograph has drawn the world's attention to a wave of migration fueled by war and deprivation.

On Friday, the boy, who died with his mother and brother when a small rubber boat capsized during their voyage from Turkey to Greece, was buried by his father in their hometown of Kobani. Photos of the lifeless body of Abdullah Kurdi's 3-year-old son after it washed up on the beach drew the world's attention to the dangers faced by those fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

"He only wanted to go to Europe for the sake of his children," said Suleiman Kurdi, an uncle of the grieving father. "Now that they're dead, he wants to stay here in Kobani next to them."

Reduction in food

In related news, the World Food Program has had to drop one-third of Syrian refugees from its food-voucher program in Middle Eastern host countries this year, a spokesman said Friday.

Since 2011, more than 4 million Syrians fled their country's civil war, most settling initially in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt.

Abeer Etefa, a World Food Program regional spokesman, said the world must do more to support refugees in the regional host countries or face increasing migration.

"This is a crisis that has been brewing in the region for five years," she said. "Now it is getting the attention of the world because it moved one step further from the region to Europe. We have to help people where they are or they will move."

The U.N. agency has been distributing food vouchers to refugees since the beginning of the Syria crisis, but it is facing increasing funding gaps.

"Since the beginning of this operation, it has been hand to mouth," Etefa said. "It is nerve-wracking for the refugees and the staff."

She said the agency needs $236 million to keep the program -- even in its scaled-back version -- funded through November. No major donors have come forward, she said.

Since the beginning of the year, the agency reduced the number of voucher recipients in the regional host countries from 2.1 million to around 1.4 million.

Information for this article was contributed by Shawn Pogatchnik, Pablo Gorondi, Mstyslav Chernov, Alexander Kuli, George Jahn, Karin Laub, Almudena Calatrava, Leonardo Haberkorn and Bradley Klapper of The Associated Press and by Palko Karasz, Anemona Hartocollis and Dan Bilefsky of The New York Times.

A Section on 09/05/2015

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