Thursday 3rd Sept.
Hungarian police halted a train packed with refugees bound for the Austrian border and tried to force them to disembark in a town with a detention camp on Thursday, a confrontation that has become a focus of Europe's migration crisis.
After shutting refugees out of the main train station in the capital Budapest for two days, authorities played a dirty trick by giving false hope to the exhausted and confused people to board a westbound train. Hundreds crammed aboard clinging to doors and squeezing their children through open carriage windows.
But instead of proceeding to the Austrian border, the train was stopped just west of Budapest in the town of Bicske, where Hungary has a migration reception centre, and police ordered the passengers off.
Police cleared one carriage, while five more stood at the station in the heat. Fearing detention, some people banged on windows chanting "No camp! No camp!"
One group pushed back dozens of riot police guarding a stairwell to fight their way back on board. One family - a man, his wife and their toddler - made their way along the track next to the train and lay down in protest. It took a dozen riot police wrestling with the man to get them up again.
"We need water," said a Syrian man who was still on the train and gave his name as Midu.
"Respect the humans in here; no respect for the humans.We want to go to Germany, not here," he said in English.
There then followed a curtailment of news reporting when baton wielding Hungarian Police forced
international journalists out of the station and declared it an operation zone.
The questions that are uppermost: what are Hungarian police afraid of or are their intended actions going to be so terrible and inhumane, that it must be kept secret from the rest of Europe ?
Report by Marton Dunai Reuters +Activist editing)
Friday:
Bob Geldof has said he is prepared to take in four refugee families to do his part in helping to deal with the growing migrant crisis.
Speaking to Dave Fanning on RTÉ Radio One, he said that he looks at the crisis with profound shame.
He said he understands the economics and the politics, and that the root cause has to be addressed.
However, he said we are in a period of fundamental shift and when people are poor they move.
"It is a monstrous betrayal of who we are and what we wish to be, we are in a moment that will be discussed and impacted upon in 300 years time, a fundamental shift in the way the world has worked for the last, say, 600 years.
"If there's a new economy there needs to be a new politics. There isn't and it's that failure of new politics that has led to this fucking disgrace."
The aid campaigner and singer said he would open the doors to his family home in Kent and his flat in London in a personal response to the shocking scenes.
"I'm prepared - I'm lucky, I've a place in Kent and a flat in London - me and [partner] Jeanne would be prepared to take three families immediately in our place in Kent and a family in our flat in London, immediately, and put them up until such time as they can get going and get a purchase on their future."
Geldof also said that he himself is an economic migrant as Britain accepted him and he said it is the same for thousands of Irish people living in England and Australia and in countries across the world.
Friday:
Bob Geldof has said he is prepared to take in four refugee families to do his part in helping to deal with the growing migrant crisis.
Speaking to Dave Fanning on RTÉ Radio One, he said that he looks at the crisis with profound shame.
He said he understands the economics and the politics, and that the root cause has to be addressed.
However, he said we are in a period of fundamental shift and when people are poor they move.
"It is a monstrous betrayal of who we are and what we wish to be, we are in a moment that will be discussed and impacted upon in 300 years time, a fundamental shift in the way the world has worked for the last, say, 600 years.
"If there's a new economy there needs to be a new politics. There isn't and it's that failure of new politics that has led to this fucking disgrace."
The aid campaigner and singer said he would open the doors to his family home in Kent and his flat in London in a personal response to the shocking scenes.
"I'm prepared - I'm lucky, I've a place in Kent and a flat in London - me and [partner] Jeanne would be prepared to take three families immediately in our place in Kent and a family in our flat in London, immediately, and put them up until such time as they can get going and get a purchase on their future."
Geldof also said that he himself is an economic migrant as Britain accepted him and he said it is the same for thousands of Irish people living in England and Australia and in countries across the world.
I just find it all so dreadful. That dear little three year old washed up dead on the shores of the Med was absolutely the last straw. It is an image that will haunt me for years. Mans' inhumanity to man in one picture.
ReplyDeleteYes me to Pat it is a dreadful scenario and so inhumane for those refugees. That having travelled so far, that the right wing brigands who rule Hungary behave so disgracefully. It begs me to ask why they were allowed to join the EU ?
DeleteOh my! I have no words. This is just horrible!!
ReplyDeleteYes, indeed Val it reminds me of the accounts I have read of the Nazis or Stalinists.
DeleteThe young family in the photo, rooted to the tracks. There can be no clearer message to the world. Are we not all human? Can we not be humane? They have come so far under the rod. These people are nobody's enemy.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your observations Geo. You are absolutely right.
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