IANS/AP
VIENNA, SEPTEMBER 5
Around 6,000 refugees have reached Austria from Hungary and more are moving into the country on foot, Austrian officials said on Saturday.
The first stop of the refugees in Austria is Nickelsdorf, a town near the border with Hungary after waiting for days in Hungary, Xinhua news agency reported.Austrian police said most of them came on foot, after being transported by Hungarian government by bus to the Austrian border, and many refugees are still on their way to Nickelsdorf.
Austrian government used trains and buses to transport the refugees, mostly from Syria, to Vienna.
Around 4,000 refugees have been transported to Vienna, and they are waiting for the other ones, Helmut Marban, the police spokesperson of the Austrian province of Burgenland, said.
An Austrian interior ministry spokesperson said over 6,000 refugees have reached the country from across the border with Hungary and they have the right to choose if they want to stay in Austria or move on to Germany, saying his country is ready to offer the people food and accommodation.
Many of these refugees are heading to Germany, saying it is a good option both for themselves or for the next generation. There are trains from Vienna to Munich in the south of Germany.
Interior minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said Austria will not use force to block thousands of refugees pouring into the country.
“After endless examples of shameful treatment by governments of refugees and migrants in Europe, it is a relief to finally see a sliver of humanity. But this is far from over, both in Hungary and in Europe as a whole,” said Gauri van Gulik, Amnesty’s deputy director for Europe.
“The pragmatic and humane approach finally applied here should become the rule, not the exception.”
A mixed crowd of friends and Austrian onlookers cheered their arrival, with many shouting “Welcome!” in both German and Arabic.
One Austrian woman pulled from her handbag a pair of children’s rubber rain boots and handed them to a Middle Eastern woman carrying a small boy.
“Austria is very good,” said Merhan Harshiri, a 23-year-old Iraqi who smiled broadly as he walked toward the supply line, where newcomers munched on fresh fruit. “We have been treated very well by Austrian police.”
“I am very happy,” said Firas Al Tahan, 38, a laundry worker from the Syrian capital, Damascus.
Seated beside him on the train station’s concrete pavement were his 33-year-old wife, Baneaa, in her lap 1-month-old daughter Dahab, and beside them four other children aged 5 to 12, all smiling beside a cart containing green and red apples.
Many had been awoken by friends at Keleti around midnight with news many didn’t believe after days of deadlock: Hungary was granting their demand to be allowed to reach Austria and, for many, onward travel to Germany.
Many feared that the scores of buses assembling at the terminal instead would take them to Hungarian camps for asylum-seekers, as the government previously insisted must happen.
At times, it took extended negotiation at the bus doors to persuade people to climb aboard.
Keleti appeared transformed Saturday as cleaners used power washers to clean up what had become a squalid urban refugee camp of approximately 3,000 residents sprawled about every courtyard and tunnel leading to Budapest’s subway system.
Only about 10 police remained to supervise a much-thinned presence of approximately 500 campers sleeping in pup tents or on blankets and carpets.
Many travelers have spent months in Turkish refugee camps, taken long and risky journeys by boat, train and foot through Greece and the Balkans, and crawled under barbed wire on Hungary’s southern frontier to a generally frosty welcome in this country with strong anti-immigrant sentiments.
Since Tuesday morning, Hungarian authorities had refused to let them board trains to the west, and the migrants balked at going to processing centers, fearing they would face deportation or indefinite detention in Hungary.
Government officials said they changed course because Hungary’s systems were becoming overwhelmed by the sheer numbers.
