Austria, Germany open borders to migrants offloaded by Hungary

VIENNA — Austria and Germany threw open their borders to thousands of exhausted migrants on Saturday, bussed to the Hungarian border by a right-wing government that had tried to stop them but was overwhelmed by the sheer numbers reaching Europe’s frontiers.

Left to walk the last yards into Austria, rain-soaked migrants, many of them refugees from Syria’s civil war, were whisked by train and shuttle bus to Vienna, where many said they were resolved to continue on to Germany.

German police later said the first 450 of up to 10 000 migrants expected on Saturday had arrived on a special train in Munich from Austria. Austrian police said over 6 000 had entered the country with more expected, highlighting the continent’s worst refugee crisis since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.

“It was just such a horrible situation in Hungary,” said Omar, arriving in Vienna with his family and hundreds of other migrants who poured out onto a fenced-off platform and were handed food, drinks and other supplies.

In Budapest, almost emptied of migrants the night before, the main railway station was again filling up with new arrivals but trains to western Europe remained cancelled. So hundreds set off by foot, saying they would walk to the Austrian border, 170 km away, like others had tried on Friday.

After days of confrontation and chaos, Hungary’s government deployed over 100 buses overnight to take thousands of migrants to the Austrian frontier. Austria said it agreed with Germany that it would allow the migrants access, waiving asylum rules that require them to register in the first EU state they reach.

Wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags against the rain, long lines of weary migrants, many carrying small, sleeping children, got off buses on the Hungarian side of the boundary and walked into Austria, receiving fruit and water from aid workers. Waiting Austrians held signs that read, “Refugees welcome”.

“We’re happy. We’ll go to Germany,” said a Syrian man who gave his name as Mohammed. Another, who declined to be named, said: “Hungary should be fired from the European Union. Such bad treatment.”

Hungary insisted the bus rides were a one-off, even as hundreds more migrants gathered in Budapest, part of a seemingly unrelenting human surge northwards through the Balkan peninsula from Turkey and Greece.

By contrast, the Austrian state railway company OeBB said it had added 4 600 seats for migrants by extending trains and laying on special, non-scheduled services.

Hungary, the main entry point into Europe’s borderless Schengen zone for migrants, has taken a hard line, vowing to seal its southern frontier with a new, high fence by 15 September.

Hungarian officials have painted the crisis as a defence of Europe’s prosperity, identity and “Christian values” against an influx of mainly Muslim migrants.

Prime minister Viktor Orban said on Saturday Hungary would deploy police forces along its border with Serbia after 15 September and the army too if parliament approves a government proposal.

“It’s not 150 000 (migrants coming) that some (in the EU) want to divide according to quotas, it’s not 500 000, a figure that I heard in Brussels, it’s millions, then tens of millions, because the supply of immigrants is endless,” he said.

— Nampa-Reuters

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