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Frustrated refugees in Budapest vow to walk to Vienna

Hungary passes new anti-migration laws

Budapest/Vienna: Hundreds of frustrated refugees who have been stuck at Budapest’s Keleti train station for days have begun gathering up their belongings, vowing to make their way to Vienna on foot.

Hungarian police stood aside and watched as the refugees, mostly young men, whistled and chanted. They say they are fed up with being stuck in limbo and are prepared to go by foot the 240 kilometers to the Austrian capital. The group is quickly gathering in size amid a tense atmosphere. The huge crowd included people in wheelchairs and on crutches, as well as parents carrying children on their shoulders, all prepared to march.

It came as Hungary’s parliament pushed through emergency anti-migration laws. The new measures include three-year jail terms for people climbing over the newly built razor wire fence on the 175-kilometre border with Serbia, as well as new border “transit zones” to hold asylum seekers while their applications are being processed.

Meanwhile in Austria, some 2,200 people had joined a social media campaign by Friday afternoon to organise a convoy of private cars and vans on Sunday to help pick up hundreds of migrants stranded in Hungary. The organisers said they were reacting to the decision by Hungary to suspend rail links to western Europe as thousands of migrants have crowded its trains stations.

Earlier in the day, Hungarian temporarily shut the Roszke border crossing with Serbia, after 300 migrants escaped from a nearby refugee camp. The Czech Republic and Slovakia proposed creating a rail corridor for refugees linking Hungary and Germany.

( Source : AFP )
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