|
 Croatian police said more than 5,000 migrants had arrived from
Serbia since Hungary sealed its southern EU border with Serbia on
Tuesday. Hungarian security forces fired tear gas and water cannon
to disperse rock-throwing refugees on Wednesday.
"Maybe the border to Croatia is open, maybe it is closed, but we are
going to try," said a Syrian man at the Serbian border town of Sid
who gave his name as Abed, one of the many who had given up hope of
crossing from Serbia into Hungary.
Several thousand migrants gathered at the Tovarnik railway station
on EU-member Croatia's side of the border with Serbia, sitting or
lying by the tracks trying to shade themselves from the sun.
"I just want to go," said Syrian Kamal Al'hak. "I may return to
Syria, but only in a few years. It's too dangerous there now."
The head of Germany's Office for Migration and Refugees resigned for
personal reasons after being criticized for being slow in processing
applications from a record number of asylum seeks. German police
said the number of refugees arriving in Germany more than doubled on
Wednesday to 7,266.
Deep differences over how to cope with the influx of people mostly
fleeing war and poverty in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan
have triggered a chain of beggar-thy-neighbor actions among European
countries, sparking a crisis in the 28-nation EU.
EU commissioner for migration Dimitris Avromopoulos told a joint
news conference with Hungary's foreign and interior ministers that
most of those arriving in Europe were Syrians "in need of our help".
"There is no wall you would not climb, no sea you would not cross if
you are fleeing violence and terror," he declared, saying barriers
of the kind Hungary has erected were temporary solutions that only
diverted refugees and migrants, increasing tensions.
 Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto hit back at criticism
from U.N. and European officials and human rights groups, saying
that siding with rioting migrants, who pelted Hungarian police with
rocks in clashes that injured 20 police, was encouraging violence.
"It is bizarre and shocking how some members of international
political life and the international press interpreted yesterday's
events," he said. "All these people will be responsible if these
events are repeated today, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow."
MUSLIMS "WILL OUTNUMBER US"
Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, who has blamed Germany for
stoking the wave of migrants entering his country after Chancellor
Angela Merkel rolled out the welcome mat for Syrian refugees, said
Muslims would end up outnumbering Christians in Europe if the policy
continued.
"I am speaking about God. I am speaking about culture and the
everyday principles of life, such as sexual habits, freedom of
expression, equality between men and woman and all those kind of
values which I call Christianity. If we let the Muslims into the
continent to compete with us, they will outnumber us. It's
mathematics. And we don't like it," Orban said in an interview
published in several European newspapers including The Times.
Neighboring Slovakia has also invoked religious differences as a
reason for rejecting mandatory quotas to share out refugees among EU
nations, as the European Commission has proposed. The EU executive
says the right to asylum is indivisible and cannot be linked to
religious or ethnic considerations.
[to top of second column] |
EU interior ministers are due to hold another special meeting next
Tuesday to try to overcome differences on handling the migration
crisis, which has prompted several EU countries led by Germany to
reintroduce temporary border controls.
The European Parliament endorsed on Thursday a Commission proposal
for the mandatory relocation of 120,000 migrants from Italy, Greece
and Hungary, opposed by four central European states including
Hungary itself.
Merkel has called for an emergency EU summit on the issue and two
German ministers have spoken of cutting European funds to central
European member states that refuse to take their allotted share of
refugees.
The future of border-free travel in the EU's Schengen zone of 26
continental European states has been cast in doubt by the
uncoordinated national actions to revive frontier checks.
CROATIA, SLOVENIA NEXT
Croatia, the most recent country to join the EU but not yet the
Schengen area, said it would not halt the influx. That puts tiny
Slovenia next in line to receive the thousands of migrants, trying
to reach Austria then Germany and other more prosperous countries of
northern and western Europe.
"We are tired. We are exhausted. We have been traveling for 10 days.
We just want to pass to through Croatia and go to Germany," said
19-year-old Salim from Syria who crossed at Sid.
Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar said his country would stick to
the Schengen rules, which require it to register and fingerprint
migrants and asylum seekers on arrival. Many refugees have refused
to be registered and destroyed their identity papers in their quest
to reach Germany.
Hundreds more migrants left Serbia's northern border with Hungary by
bus bound for Croatia, emptying makeshift camps created after
Hungary sealed the frontier, a Reuters reporter in the Serbian
village of Horgos said.
Bulgaria said it was sending more soldiers to strengthen controls
along its border with Turkey and avoid a refugee influx. About 600
migrants tried to cross the border in the last 25 hours but returned
voluntarily after seeing it was well guarded, a Bulgarian Interior
Ministry official said.
Bulgaria is a member of the EU but not of the Schengen area.
(Additional reporting by Elizabeth Piper in London, Ivana Sekularac
in Horgos, Serbia, Igor Ilic in Zagreb and Marja Novak in Ljubljana,
Writing by Paul Taylor, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
|
