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UP FRONTSaturday 12 September
Migrant quota plan rebuffed by 4 European nations
GEORGE JAHN growing criticism about its er line, saying his country people,” said 31-year-old said.
KAREL JANICEK stance toward the asylum intended to catch, convict Amer Zein, from the Syrian Bottlenecks have devel-
Associated Press seekers. Other EU leaders and imprison people who city of Aleppo, who crossed oped at the borders during
VIENNA (AP) — At least and human rights groups continue to penetrate its into Macedonia on Friday. the crisis as thousands of
four countries Friday firmly accuse the government new border barriers as part Still, he was determined people, many from war-
rejected a European Union of gross mismanagement of get-tough border secu- to push on to Germany torn Syria, travel across the
plan to impose refugee or serious negligence in rity measures scheduled to with his wife, brother and eastern flank of Europe.
quotas to ease a worsen- housing, feeding and pro- begin Tuesday. a friend, despite what he Reflecting those tensions
ing migrant crisis that Ger- cessing the migrants trav- “If they don’t cross into had heard was happening at the main crossing into
Austria, a trickle of migrants
Syrian refugees wait to be registered by police in the southern Serbian town of Presevo, Friday, Sept. 11, 2015. Tens of thousands marching toward Vienna
quickly swelled into a tor-
of people, many from war-torn Syria, have traveled across the eastern flank of Europe, from Turkey to Greece by sea, over land in rent early Friday toward a
major Austrian highway.
Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary and Austria. Tense bottlenecks have developed at those borders, especially since Hungary began Police briefly closed the
A4 motorway to Vienna
building a fence to keep the migrants out. (AP Photo/Santi Palacios) because of the potential
dangers posed by people
many’s foreign minister said eling from the Balkans and Hungary territory legally, in Hungary. walking on the road.
was “probably the biggest through Hungary to West- we will consider it a crime,” “We will sit and do what- The trek was sparked by an
challenge” in the history of ern Europe. Orban said, saying the “il- ever the police tell us. We Austrian Federal Railways
the 28-nation bloc. Peter Bouckaert of Human legal immigrants” had no are afraid, but we must get decision to suspend train
Hungary, which along with Rights Watch asserted Hun- one to blame but them- through,” he said. shuttle service for the mi-
the Czech Republic, Slo- gary was keeping migrants selves for any hardships suf- A Hungarian camerawom- grants to Vienna from the
vakia and Poland said it and refugees “in pens like fered. an who was caught on Nickelsdorf crossing, citing
would not support the pro- animals, out in the sun with- “They don’t cooperate. video kicking and tripping overcrowding. But Austrian
posal, threatened instead out food and water.” They are not willing to go migrants near the Serbian officials later rounded up
to crack down on the thou- A video that the rights to the places where they border offered a qualified extra buses and taxis to fer-
sands of people streaming group said was from in- receive provisions: food, apology Friday. ry people to Vienna, along
across its borders daily as side a holding facility at water, shelter, health care. In a letter in the Magyar with the three regular trains
they flee war and persecu- the border town of Roszke They have risen up against Nemzet newspaper, Petra scheduled from Nickels-
tion. showed metal fences sur- Hungary’s legal order,” he Laszlo said she was “sin- dorf.
The stance by those Cen- rounding clusters of tents told a Budapest news con- cerely sorry for what hap- The shuttle shutdown fol-
tral European countries and dividing migrants into ference. pened,” but added: “I was lowed the company’s sus-
reflected a hardening groups. Guards were de- Hungarian police already scared as they streamed pension Thursday of all train
front against distributing at picted throwing food into are overwhelmed with the toward me, and then service toward Vienna from
least some of the refugees the air for desperate peo- influx and are unlikely to be something snapped inside the Hungarian capital, Bu-
among them and was a ple to grab. able to mount an effective me.” dapest, where thousands
stinging rebuff to German Erno Simon, a spokesman effort to jail those deemed The 40-year-old was fired have overwhelmed the
Foreign Minister Frank-Wal- in Hungary for the U.N. refu- to be entering illegally. Still, by the right-wing N1TV on- main Keleti station to try to
ter Steinmeier, who trav- gee agency, said the hous- Orban’s comments were line channel after video board westbound trains.
eled to Prague to try to ing situation in Roszke with likely to feed the trepida- of her taken by other jour- Only a relatively few peo-
persuade them to recon- nighttime temperatures tion some of the migrants nalists went viral. Police ple have sought asylum
sider. falling to near freezing “is already were expressing released Laszlo without once in Vienna. Instead,
While the Czechs, Slovaks really very, very alarming.” Friday even while still hun- charges after questioning the capital has served as a
and Poles have been rela- Unfazed, Hungarian Prime dreds of kilometers (miles) her on suspicion of disor- transit point for many arriv-
tively unaffected by the Minister Viktor Orban away from Hungary, derly conduct. An investi- ing in the past week.
influx, Hungary has faced threatened an even hard- “We heard they are hitting gation is continuing, they Most have gone on to Ger-
many, where 450,000 mi-
grants have entered. It is
expecting at least 800,000
this year, the most in Eu-
rope. Munich authorities
said more than 40,000 peo-
ple have arrived in the past
six days.
Hans Peter Doskozil, the
police chief of eastern Bur-
genland, said 7,500 people
had crossed into Austria
at Nickelsdorf on Thursday
alone.
Steinmeier, the German for-
eign minister, was in Prague
to try to round up support
for a plan put forth Wednes-
day by European Commis-
sion President Jean-Claude
Juncker to share 120,000
refugees now in Greece,
Italy and Hungary among
the EU nations.q
