3 Sep 2015

The chaos of EU refugee policy in Hungary

The Hungarian government says it’s implementing the law, bringing order into the chaos of EU refugee policy. That’s not how it looked in Budapest and the tiny town of Bicske today.

When we got to the platform at Keleti station this morning, police had withdrawn and several hundred migrants and refugees allowed to get on a train. But where was it going? No-one knew. People kept asking us: “Where’s it going? Should we get on? What do you advise?”

Of course we could give no advice – we were as confused as they were. I asked a policeman who had boarded where it was going. “I don’t know. Surprise!” he said.

And it was a bad surprise. Although the signs on the side said the train was going to Sopren on the border with Austria, it drew into the station at Bicske less than an hour up the track. Some people got off, believing they had reached their destination and then realised it was a trap so got back on.

Bad news travels fast: there’s a refugee camp at Bicske. If they were taken there they would enter the Hungarian asylum procedure where the chances of being sent back to Syria or Afghanistan are high. Hungary accepts less than 10 per cent of asylum claims compared to more than 40 per cent in Germany.

There were scuffles and screams – in the chaos a distraught Syrian man pushed his wife and baby onto the tracks as some kind of desperate protest. The police arrested him. Most refugees stayed on the sweltering train, some throwing back bottles of water proffered by the police. “We don’t want water, we don’t want food, we just want to leave,” shouted one man. “We will walk to Vienna” said a woman sitting on the step at the train door. Some held up signs in blue biro: “Thank you Serbia, Greece, Mekdonia. Go to hell Hungary government,” read one.

Eventually the police forced the media to leave the platform. What did they plan to do with the people on the train? We didn’t know. But they didn’t want us to see it.

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