Police deal with hundreds of immigrants at Hungary’s doorsteps.
America isn’t the only country wrestling with an illegal immigration problem, it seems. The 28-nation bloc of the European Union has been seeing chaos on its borders, due largely to tensions in the Mideast and Asia and the flight of thousands of refugees, leading at least one political watcher to characterize the ensuing atmosphere as a crisis of “biblical proportions.”
Waves of migrants are hitting the EU’s borders from Greece, Italy and Hungary, fleeing tensions in Afghanistan, Iran and Syria. Since Monday alone, 3,500 immigrants have registered at the Austria border, German police said, the Telegraph reported. And before the end of the year, that number’s expected to hit 800,000.
British Labour Party’s Yvette Cooper called on the United Kingdom to take in up to 10,000 of the refugees, saying the situation is a crisis of “biblical proportions” and that Britain must “respond to a humanitarian crisis on a scale we have not seen on our continent since the Second World War,” British newspapers reported.
But the border crossings are fueling anger among citizens. In Germany, for example, one family seeking settlement reportedly saw their apartment firebombed, prompting EU President Donald Tusk to issue a scathing response.
“Whatever the challenges migration might bring,” he said, the Telegraph reported, “there is no justification for hostile, racist or xenophobic reactions to migrants.”
Budapest, especially, is in turmoil. Called ground zero for the worsening immigration turmoil in Europe by the New York Times, the situation is this: Austria’s interior minister, Johanna Mikl-Leitner, is blaming Germany – a hoped-for destination for many of the fleeing asylum seekers – for failing to clarify its asylum policies. And in return, Germany’s Werner Faymann is pointing fingers at Budapest for failing to register any of the asylum-seekers before sending them along to Austria.
Chancellor Faymann said, the New York Times reported: “That they are simply getting on board in Budapest and they make sure they will travel to the neighboring country – what sort of politics is that?”
And just this week, Hungary summoned the Austrian ambassador to the Foreign Ministry to explain the confusion.
“It is disappointing and incomprehensible that the leader of a neighboring country should talk in this vein about an issue which is causing Hungary, as well as Europe, immense difficulties amounting to a historic chellenge,” said Peter Szijjarto, the minister of foreign affairs, to local press.
On Tuesday, Hungary cracked down further on immigration flow, suspending all rail travel from its Budapest main terminal and ordering hundreds of asylum-seekers off the trains.
Local press reported the booted immigrants then took up loud chants, “Freedom! Freedom!” And hundreds flopped at spots outside of the transit building, spilling onto sidewalks and streets, in what’s becoming a hot spot gathering of abandoned immigrants, the Associated Press reported. Media outlets reported several fights broke out as the crowds fought to board platforms and jump on trains heading for Vienna and Munich, but were held back by police.
The station closure is believed to have come at the call of other EU nations that are unable or unwilling to deal with the surge of immigrants. Organization for Migration, an international tracking organization, reported more than 332,000 have gained entry into the European Union from the Mideast and Asia in the last eight months. The U.N. children’s agency, meanwhile, said the number of women and children seeking safe passage through Macedonia in the past three months has tripled, and now an estimated 3,000 per day are making the journey. One in eight of those women are pregnant, AP said.
Some in the bloc are calling for strict clamp-downs on the influx.
Bloomberg Business reported Milos Zeman, Czech Republic president, called to put the army at the borders to get rid of “illegal immigrants,” he said.
“Of course I would wish for the EU to strengthen its borders, but I don’t see any real action,” he said, during a press conference. “Therefore, I believe the Czech Republic should take [care] of its borders alone and expel illegal immigrants from the borders, including with the use of the army.”
And in Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government is speeding toward the completion of a border fence with Serbia. Orban’s chief of staff, Janos Lazar, then fueled political flames by putting the bulk of the blame for the recent immigrant influx directly on those with leftist views who’ve led the EU over the past decade.
“The EU has failed to manage the situation and the problem is the EU itself, which is incapable of protecting its own borders,” he said, the New York Times reported.
Italy, meanwhile, is reeling from the recent murder of an elderly couple, allegedly by an asylum seeker from the Ivory Coast, and some politicians are using the incident to strike back at immigration.
African asylum-seeker Mamadou Kamara, 18, has been accused of cutting the throat of Vincenzo Solano, 68, and then killing his wife, Mercedes Ibanez, 70, the Telegraph reported. Kamara was arrested after police found suspicious items in his bag during a search upon his return to a migrant center set up at the port of Sicily.
“Italians fear for their lives inside their own homes,” said Gianluca Buonanno, a member of a local anti-immigrant faction of a political party. “What kind of country are we living in?”
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2015/09/01/border-crisis-of-biblical-proportions-in-europe/
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