Migrants wary of Hungary’s promises in railway stand-off

Ahmed and Nur thought they had escaped Europe's worst crisis when they packed their rucksacks and left eastern Ukraine behind.

They studied in Kharkiv, a city north of Ukraine’s conflict zone and controlled by the government.

Kharkiv is regularly rocked by explosions, which are blamed on groups linked to separatists and to Russia, which is only 35km away.

On Thursday they found themselves at Budapest’s main train station, watching the latest strange twist in Hungary’s attempt to deal with a migration crisis that has brought more than 150,000 asylum seekers to the country this year.

Hungary’s actions have divided the EU as its border and asylum policies crumble.

After barring more than 2,000 migrants from the station for two days, prompting them to create a sprawling camp in the square outside, police stood aside at about 8am on Thursday, allowing crowds to surge in and board a train.

Ahmed (27) had a ticket to Munich, bought for €125 and valid for 15 days, but he was wary of trying to squeeze on to a train in which people were pressed against the windows and hanging from the doors.

"I heard they need doctors in Germany and I would like to go there," said Ahmed, who is from Darfur in Sudan.

"But I'm also thinking of staying in Hungary. Life might not be too bad here."

Loves Ukraine

Nur, a Syrian, said he wanted to live in

England

, but only while Ukraine’s future was uncertain.

"I love Ukraine more than Syria, and I would like to go back," he said.

The slender Arab and burly African had met here, 1,500km east of Kharkiv, at a train station where Nur had been stuck for 10 days.

“We have no sleep, little food and we are cold at night,” said Nur (24), explaining that he had money for a westward train ticket but was unsure whether to buy it now.

The men’s reticence proved well founded: when the train finally pulled away, supposedly bound for the Austrian border, it travelled just 35km to Bicske, where police tried to take the passengers to a camp for asylum seekers.

Some scuffled with police, ran away or refused to leave the train, and banged on windows chanting “No camp, no camp!”

Others threw themselves on the rails in front of the train, which was painted to celebrate a “borderless Europe”, 25 years since the fall of the Iron Curtain, and showed people running free past a watchtower and broken barbed-wire fence.

Hungary has unfurled a 175km razor-wire fence along its border with Serbia to block migrants, but it has made no difference: some 3,000 people are predicted to arrive each day until late autumn, travelling by boat from Turkey to Greece and then crossing Macedonia and Serbia.

Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orban, told top EU officials on Thursday that the crisis was purely "a German problem" because most migrants wanted to go there.

Meanwhile, parliament in Budapest discussed moves to further tighten the border.

Deploying army

New measures would impose tougher punishments for crossing the border illegally and allow the army to be deployed more easily in the border area; Hungary also plans to build a 4m-high steel fence along the Serbian frontier.

Orban said the new laws and the fence would "provide a new situation in Hungary and in Europe from September 15th. Now we have one week of preparation time".

Hungary says it is trying to uphold EU border and asylum rules in the face of unprecedented numbers, and blames Germany for undermining the system by pledging to accept Syrian asylum seekers regardless of where they entered the bloc.

Orban's chief of staff, Janos Lazar, rejected criticism of Hungary for allowing migrants to board international trains on Monday, then banning them from doing so and closing the station on Tuesday, before reopening it again on Thursday.

“This is because Germany . . . more than a week ago told Syrians that Germany awaited them, inviting them to the laid table,” Lazar said in Budapest.

“We believe this is primarily an immigration crisis, not a refugee crisis, and in this situation Europe can’t renounce defending its borders.”

Lazar might consider Ahmed and Nur to be economic migrants, having come to the EU not directly from a war zone but the relative safety of Kharkiv.

To get to Budapest, Nur flew to Turkey and then paid for a place on a smuggler's flimsy boat to Greece, before joining the main Balkan route north; Ahmed paid a trafficker in western Ukraine $2,000 (€1,775) to drive him across Poland and Slovakia to Hungary.

Ibrahim, Ahmed and Saleh left Darfur several months ago, weighing up whether to risk a journey through violence- plagued Libya and a dangerous Mediterranean crossing to Italy, or to take the longer Balkan route.

“It’s easy to get shot in Libya and to drown going to Italy, so we went via Turkey,” said Ibrahim.

“We’ve been stuck here in Budapest for three weeks, and we’ve had enough. We need to move - to Germany if possible - but Hungary won’t let us go. Why? There’s nothing for us here. No one wants to spend a single day here. Just let us go!”

Mistrust Hungary

On top of deep tiredness and frustration, many migrants now fear and mistrust the Hungarian authorities, with their changing rules and what many at the station see as the cruel trick played on Thursday to get people into camps.

"I've spent an hour-and- a-half going round the station telling people not to get on any trains - it's a trick and will not get you to Austria or Germany," said Darius(31), an engineer from Iran who left his home in the town of Semnan 17 days ago.

“I feel like everyone else here, after living without sleep and a shower and with little food and water,” he said.

“I don’t really care where I go - I come from a hard place. But what about all the kids here? Have they come to Europe to live in camps?”