REFUGEES stood their ground yesterday in Hungary, defied the police and refused to go to a ‘refugee camp’.
They said that they had purchased rail tickets for Germany and that was where they intended to go.
They added that on Saturday morning they would be marching to the border. Their train had left Budapest station on Thursday. Anger erupted when the train stopped at the town of Biscke and riot police surrounded it demanding that the migrants get off and be ‘registered’ in a camp.
As dawn broke on Friday morning, cries of ‘No camp, freedom!’ rang out as the riot police looked on.
On the side of the train, someone had written with shaving foam – ‘No camp. No Hungary. Freedom train’. All transport from Hungary to Germany has now been cancelled, while the Hungarian parliament is discussing further measures against the migrants.
Meanwhile, migrants left at Budapest station, their train tickets for Germany and Austria in their hands, are demanding to know why the Hungarian authorities are blocking their safe passage. Hundreds of desperate migrants left the station yesterday afternoon to march 150 miles to the border.
Meanwhile more than 1,900 Germans and Austrians have formed a ‘People’s Convoy’ to get the migrants to Germany via Vienna. Facebook on Friday morning announced the ‘rail replacement operation for refugees’. The first convoy will depart from the Ernst Happel Stadium in Vienna on Sunday morning and drive the 150 miles, across the border with Hungary, to pick up the refugees and take them back.
Back in Biscke, Ahmed Mahmoud, 60, who said he was a former Iraqi military officer who had lost both legs and was trying to join his daughter in Belgium, said: ‘We don’t know what’s going on. The police told us, get fingerprinted or face jail time. So we gave our fingerprints and they told us we can go. I just want to see my child in Belgium.’
• 69,000 people have already signed up to attend a demonstration through central London to welcome asylum seekers and refugees, and oppose the policy of the Tory government. Tory PM Cameron has now been forced to say that he will now accept a handful of migrants into Britain, but only from already established UN refugee camps bordering Syria.
He will not accept any migrants from among people who have already made the dangerous journey across the sea and made it to Europe. So far, the UK has legally welcomed a mere 216 Syrians in the last four years. Cameron would not commit to a figure that he would accept from the established UN camps. He said that the world will have to wait until next week for that announcement.
The demonstration through central London to welcome refugees and asylum seekers has been called by Ros Ereira. She said: ‘I’ve never organised anything like this before, and assumed that when I posted the event on Facebook that it might result in half a dozen friends joining me to wave placards in the rain. But the response has been simply staggering, with 69,000 people already signed up to say they will attend.
‘I hope that the demonstration can show our government that there are many people in the UK who would like to welcome more refugees into the country. We can’t watch as more people die in their attempt to reach Europe.’
The demonstration will start from Marble Arch in London on Saturday 12 September at midday.
