Around 100-150 migrants staged a demonstration outside Budapest’s main international train station today as police blocked some 2,000 people from boarding trains to Austria and Germany.
Around 600 men, women and children, mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, were sitting or standing outside the Keleti station while some 1,200 were downstairs in a so-called “transit zone”, an AFP reporter said.
<g data-gr-id="20">Meanwhile</g> around 100 migrants arriving from a registration centre near the border with Serbia were sitting on the platform at a suburban train station, refusing to board a train to the Debrecen refugee camp. Police said in a statement that the group “demanded to be allowed to travel on to Germany... Police have taken the necessary security steps to ensure that train traffic is undisturbed.”
Hungary, which saw 50,000 migrants enter the country in August alone, this week allowed thousands to board trains to Austria and Germany but in a U-turn yesterday police suddenly blocked access to the station for anyone without an EU visa. Only around 150 migrants arrived in Vienna by train from Budapest last afternoon, police said. On Monday, a record 3,650 arrived.
The Hungarian government of right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, which has built a razor-wire barrier along its 175-kilometre border with <g data-gr-id="18">Serbia,</g> said that it was applying EU rules.