Police in Hungary Stop a Train Full of Refugees, Throw Them in A Detention Camp

[John Nada]

Hungarian police have stopped a train bound for towns near the Austrian border, prompting fears among the migrants and refugees on board that they were being made to go to a camp nearby.

The train had left Budapest’s Keleti (Eastern) station on Thursday morning, and was the first to depart after the end of a two-day police blockade that prompted up to 3,000 people trying to travel to western Europe to camp outside.

However the train, bound for Sopron near Hungary’s border with Austria, was halted by scores of riot police at the town of Bicske, an hour from Budapest, where one of Hungary’s four main refugee camps is located. Passengers deemed to be migrants were ordered to disembark. Some refused, instead banging on the windows shouting “No camp, no camp!”

Reuters reported that all media had been ordered to leave Bicske station, with the police having declared it an “operation zone”.More at: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/03/budapest-station-reopens-no-trains-running-western-europe-migration-crisis-europe

This is fucking bullshit. People have died by the thousands to appease xenophobes.

[ComradeAllende]

More at: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/03/budapest-station-reopens-no-trains-running-western-europe-migration-crisis-europe

This is fucking bullshit. People have died by the thousands to appease xenophobes.

So much for "diversity" and "inclusiveness" in the EU...

[Hatshepsut]

The possibility of this type of situation is part of why England and France at first argued against Hungary’s EU accession when talks began in 1990 after the Wall fell. Xenophobia plays a role in the ethnic populist shouting galleries watching this river of people, but for the EU it is a matter of whether the integrity of their corporate welfare states can be maintained. For Europe must subsidize employment to keep its official out-of-work rates, currently around 11%, from climbing. Immigration puts stress on the individual welfare state as well.

To wit: Diversity & Inclusiveness are relative things. “We won’t have the pogroms and Kristallnachts which have decorated so much of our history,” all Europe now says. Croatia’s now in the EU, barely twenty years after presence or absence of Catholic heritage determined whether your throat got cut. The milquetoasts in Brussels are probably sincere in their desires for universal human fraternity. Can they reconcile this with a wish to use Congo as cheap source of cobalt while pretending Syria doesn’t exist? (The better for Turkey to get in if its eastern limb remains invisible.) Europe, if only historically linked to chronic unrest in the Middle East and Africa via dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and the colonial exit, refuses to believe that exacerbation of such unrest is price for an economic vision where goods and information flow freely while people are containerized behind national walls.

[redapple]

But what are we Americans doing? While Europeans share the responsibility, the US takes in 0 refugees. ZERO.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

But what are we Americans doing? While Europeans share the responsibility, the US takes in 0 refugees. ZERO.

"Europeans", meaning the European governments and the EU, share the responsibility... for impeding these refugees fleeing from a war financed and fueled by, among others, European governments and the EU (even our small and insignificant Croatian bourgeoisie managed to turn a handsome profit selling arms to the Syrian opposition). Also the refugees are physically in Europe. Of course socialists also oppose US imperialism, but in this situation the EU imperialists and the racist Fortress Europe are the chief problem.

[Os Cangaceiros]

But what are we Americans doing? While Europeans share the responsibility, the US takes in 0 refugees. ZERO.

The US gov't does take in refugees, usually from conflict zones closer to their border though, like Honduras.

The refugees go to Europe because Europe has a closer proximity to the Middle East (duh)

[Sentinel]

The Swedish Social Democrat PM Stefan Löfven will meet Angela Merkel tomorrow. He has promised to cooperate with Germany to put pressure on Hungary and other EU countries refusing to take in refugees, demanding the quota to be increased for all countries in the union.

In a press conference this morning he presented a ten point programme to improve the situation; for a faster, safer and more effective system for dealing with refugees. He had earlier been criticised for a lack of concrete proposals, and for not seizing the opportunity to use the recently changing public opinion to turn the tables against the far right effectively enough.

Yesterday there was a Refugees Welcome-demonstration of tens of thousands in Stockholm. The leader of the Swedish Left Party Jonas Sjöstedt has also demanded that Hungary be punished by the EU for violating its human rights paragraph, by being suspended from participating in the Ministers Council.

I'm sceptical the government (which the Left party is not part of) will go as far as to demand that though.


The US gov't does take in refugees, usually from conflict zones closer to their border though, like Honduras.

The refugees go to Europe because Europe has a closer proximity to the Middle East (duh)

While it is natural that the refugees come to Europe first for geographical reasons, one would certainly hope the US government took responsibility too, seeing it is highly responsible for the situation in Iraq and Syria.

[Hatshepsut]

Can most of the people in question obtain legal standing as refugees which they don't yet have anyway? The UNHCR has a related donation appeal circulating, but doesn't make asylum decisions which tend to base on narrow grounds. Not everyone from Syria will qualify just by being from that country, only those who can prove that their hometowns were taken over by ISIS or bombed by Assad's forces are likely to receive permanent residence permissions; getting the documents needed to show place of origin and existence of political persecution or displacement by act of war is difficult for those who don't have them. Oddly, the USA couldn't fly them to New York City right now even if it wanted to: No one would be allowed to board planes at European airports without papers under European laws.

Few of the 3 million folks displaced are currently in Europe; Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan are the major hosts in this situation, unlike Europe not having refused entries. However, those crossing over are on their own financially and with respect to finding food and water as far as I can tell, generally in tent cities near the borders.

RSC Oxford on Syria, from 2014
http://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/files/publications/policy-briefing-series/pb10-protection-europe-refugees-syria-2014.pdf

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

While it is natural that the refugees come to Europe first for geographical reasons, one would certainly hope the US government took responsibility too, seeing it is highly responsible for the situation in Iraq and Syria.

But what would that entail? For the refugees to reach the US, they would have to either risk their lives on a trans-oceanic journey, the consequences of which would be staggering, or the US would have to finance some sort of airlift or similar - which won't happen. Or the US could pay some pittance to the EU member states, but this would not accomplish anything, it would just perpetuate the myth that the European states want to help the refugees but can't because of budget deficits/legal constraints/whatever. To focus on the US in this situation - which I don't think you're doing but redapple might have - is to amnesty the EU and its member states.

[Artiom]

You guys seen the movie Children of men? The EU's borders is getting there....