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Bashi's journey from Africa to Europe may signal a bigger refugee crisis to come

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Efstathiadis) — Thu, 10 Sep 2015 05:51:00 +0000

Mohamed Yahya Monday 7 September 2015

Africa is crying out for more financial support, to tackle the conflict, poverty and instability that drives people like Bashi*, from Somalia, to flee

Internally displaced Somalis at Badbaado refugee camp in Mogadishu. As Africa’s population grows, the number of people escaping conflict in countries like Somalia will continue to rise. Photograph: Mustafa Abdi/AFP/Getty
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The next time you read the news reports from Sicily and Calais and Greece, I hope you will remember Bashi*, one young African man among many currently in a migrants’ camp in Europe.
I first met Bashi in 2011 at my mother’s house in Kenya. As he grilled me about my work with the United Nations, it was immediately apparent that he was self-assured and articulate. As I got to know him better, I never thought that he would join the young Africans undertaking perilous journeys to seek new starts in faraway lands.
Bashi’s story begins in Somalia: aged 14, he crossed the border into northern Kenya to get away from an intensifying conflict. He ended up in Dadaab, one of the largest refugee camps in Africa, living alongside more than 350,000 people.
After a couple of years, Bashi made another audacious journey, this time to the capital, Nairobi, to seek work and education. It is illegal under Kenyan law for refugees to leave the camp, but Bashi “camouflaged” himself in the predominantly Somali neighbourhood Eastleigh. He became a waiter by day, and a student by night, keen to ensure that the circumstances of his birth did not imprison his future.
2014 was a good year for Bashi. He opened his own small shop, selling clothes and “advancing fashion in Nairobi”, as he put it. Bashi was christened the hipster of Eastleigh because of his fondness for tight jeans, oversized glasses and other trendy paraphernalia.
But when I met him again that year, it was clear Bashi was concerned about his future; things had changed for Somalis in Kenya since the intensification of al-Shabaab activities. He worried he could lose his business and be deported. He seemed subdued, but maintained his entrepreneurial zeal.
Last month when I was back in Kenya, I asked around for news of Bashi. I received a text message with a picture of the front page of an Italian newspaper, showing a well-dressed young man carrying a Syrian baby. It was Bashi, on the Greek island of Lesbos.
I learnt that Bashi had left Kenya in July, having saved $4,500 for his voyage. He chose Sweden because he had heard it is a place of tolerance, opportunity and open access to education. He also has distant relatives there.
The first leg of the journey was from Kenya to Iran, and for this Bashi paid $1,600 to a “broker”. A series of brokers, essentially smugglers, took Bashi through different segments of his journey.

Bashi’s journey – from Kenya to Iran, then to Turkey and Greece all the way through to Austria. Click here for a larger version of the map. Photograph: UNDP Africa
During his voyage, Bashi met Syrians, Afghans, Sudanese and Eritreans, all united in their refusal to accept life as dictated by geography and circumstance. They shared meals, walked over mountains and evaded border guards together.
Bashi walked 23 hours to the Turkish border, then travelled to Istanbul, and from there to Greece, where the picture I saw was taken. In Athens, another broker facilitated travel through Macedonia, into Serbia.
In Belgrade, Bashi ran out of money. He called on his network of friends, who sent the €1,400 ($1,550) he needed to get to Vienna. There, he was stopped on his way to Germany and was sent to a “holding camp” in Salzburg, where he remains.
Bashi’s story is little different from the stories of millions of Europeans who migrated to the United States in the 19th century. Those Europeans, just like the migrants of today, were escaping poverty, discrimination and conflict. Bashi, like the majority of those people, will most certainly contribute significantly to any nation that will give him asylum.
As Africa’s population continues to grow, the number of people crossing deserts and seas will continue to rise. Responses have focused primarily on enforcement, but it is clear barriers and barbed wire will not deter people who are prepared to risk their lives.
In the short term, there is no escaping the tough decisions required to absorb and integrate a significant number of the people who have already arrived in Europe, and who cannot be repatriated to countries in conflict.
Contrary to some popular narratives, the Bashis of this world are not motivated by the European welfare state; they are attracted by peace, opportunities for development, employment and a legal system that promises equality and protection.
African countries must break their silence and ask why their young people feel compelled to leave. Making the continent politically and economically attractive for young people must be a priority response. African bodies, such as the Intergovernmental Authority for Development (Igad) are aware of this challenge, and are looking for support, but this is a long-term project.
Another positive move could be to ease restrictions for asylum seekers and economic migrants within African borders. Africa already hosts the largest proportion of African migrants, but often they struggle to gain citizenship or the right to work legally.
The international community must act in unison and redouble efforts to address the root drivers of migration: poverty, conflict, and lack of opportunity.
In an increasingly unequal and unpredictable world, the dispossessed refuse to suffer quietly. If their actions do not elicit increased investment in development, conflict prevention and global solidarity, then the current crises will simply herald a bigger exodus to come.

Mohamed Yahya is Africa regional programme coordinator for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

*Bashi is a nickname, the use of which is common in Somalia

Bashi's journey from Africa to Europe may signal a bigger refugee crisis to come | Mohamed Yahya | Global development | The Guardian

European migrant crisis: Asylum seekers break through Hungarian police lines on Serbia border for second time

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Efstathiadis) — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 08:12:00 +0000

Wednesday 9 September 2015

Photo: An asylum seeker carrying a baby is stopped by Hungarian police officers as he tries to escape (Reuters: Marko Djurica)
Related Story: Hundreds of asylum seekers march along Hungary highway
Related Story: Camerawoman sacked for kicking asylum seekers
Related Story: Top UN official urges 'global response' to migration crisis in Europe
Map: Hungary
Several hundred asylum seekers have broken through police lines at Hungary's main border crossing with Serbia for the second day in a row, leading to a tense standoff during which police used pepper spray on one occasion to move a group off a main road.
Key points:

Several hundred asylum seekers broke through police lines
During a tense standoff ensued police used pepper spray to contain the crowd
Police persuaded the group to be transported to refugee registration camps

The series of breakouts took place on Tuesday local time at a police collection point near the border crossing at Roszke, the first stop on the Hungarian side of the border with Serbia.
The collection point is used to hold people before they are taken to a registration camp nearby.
Some 300 asylum seekers, part of a group of 1,500 people waiting for hours at the collection point, bolted past police through a cornfield onto a train track, to walk to the nearby city of Szeged.
Police later managed to persuade the group to be transported to refugee registration camps around the country.
Later, several hundred more asylum seekers broke out of the collection point in various groups, and walked around a kilometre along a main road.
A tense standoff ensued, during which police used pepper spray to contain the crowd before transporting them by bus back to a registration camp at Roszke.
Photo: Refugees are accompanied by police officers after breaking out from the migrant collection point near Roszke. (AFP: Attila Kisbenedek)
Hungary continues building fence despite criticism

The disturbances were the latest in a series of incidents on European Union member Hungary's southern border with Serbia, a major entry point into the European Union for asylum seekers fleeing war and misery in the Middle East and Asia.

Asylum seekers as Germany's saviour

Germany may have found a solution to the problem of its ageing population as asylum seekers continue to arrive, writes Andrew McCathie in Berlin.

On Monday, some 300 people pushed past a police line at the same collection point, with scuffles erupting throughout the day as the migrants chanted "Freedom!"
After marching some 15 kilometres along a motorway they eventually agreed to be taken back to the registration centre by bus.
More than 165,000 migrants have crossed into Hungary so far this year.
Most seek to travel on to Germany via Austria.
Hungary recently completed construction of a razor-wire barrier along its 175-kilometre frontier with Serbia, but it has failed to stop large numbers of people getting through.
It is currently building an additional four-metre fence despite widespread criticism, with France's foreign minister saying the barrier does "not respect European values".
Photo: Police used pepper spray to contain the crowd before transporting them by bus back to a registration camp at Roszke. (AFP: Attila Kisbenedek)
AFP

European migrant crisis: Asylum seekers break through Hungarian police lines on Serbia border for second time - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Saving Islam from the Deceit and Depravity of the Islamic State

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Efstathiadis) — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 01:26:00 +0000

Muhammad Al-Yaqoubi ABC Religion and Ethics 9 September 2015

ISIS is destroying Islam from within, striking at the hearts of Muslims and replacing the corpus of knowledge, jurisprudence and principles of legal judgments with the words of ignorant men. Credit: AFP / Tauseed Mustafa
See also

Related Story: The End of the Arab Spring, the Rise of ISIS and the Future of Political Islam Khaled Abou El Fadl 23 Apr 2015
Related Story: All for a Good Cause? Islamic State and the Delusions of 'Salvational Cause Amorality' Khaled Abou El Fadl 17 Oct 2014
Related Story: The Pretender-Caliph and Islamic History: The Truth about Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi Asma Afsaruddin 16 Jul 2014
Related Story: A State of Fear: What ISIS Is, and What It Is Not David Kilcullen 22 May 2015
Related Story: Khaled al-Asaad, the Martyr of Palmyra Pierre Leriche 1 Sep 2015
Related Story: Limitations on Religious Freedom in Islam: The Witness of the Qur'an and Prophetic Traditions Abdullah Saeed 23 May 2014

Islam has never been challenged from within as it is now. Scholars are therefore obliged to respond, and their response should be intellectual.
The ideology of the Islamic State (to which the media typically refers with the initials ISIS, which stands for "the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria") is based on a complex system of fallacies that cut the sacred texts from their context, and on a series of devious stratagems that select from the corpus of the law what satisfies their twisted minds.
There are a great many proofs that utterly destroy the claims of ISIS and expose their manipulation of the Shariah (Islamic law), but knowledge of these proofs is confined to the classical texts and is generally inaccessible to the average Muslim reader.
From this void has sprung great confusion, eliciting the following questions which are frequently put to me:

Is the declaration of a caliphate by ISIS valid?
Are the crimes of ISIS justified in Islam?
Does ISIS represent Sunni Islam?
Are Muslims allowed to fight against ISIS?
Where does the ideology of ISIS come from?
What is Islam's position on fighting ISIS?
How do we protect our youth from being brainwashed by the ideology of ISIS?

A number of brigades in Syria have resorted to fighting against these extremists, which has distracted many of them from jihad against the Assad regime, leading to the martyrdom of some among them. Likewise, a number of Muslim nations have declared war against this notoriously dangerous group.
Fighters in Syria and other Arab nations have also enquired about the ruling of this fighting and the status of whoever is killed in these battles - particularly, they are asking if they are martyrs?
For some time, discussions have been taking place in the public sphere regarding the status of pilots who participate in the war against ISIS, and while many famous scholars have hesitated in giving a ruling, some did not even consider those killed while fighting ISIS as martyrs - a position which I utterly reject.
Similarly, wherever I go, I often field questions from the public about Islam's position regarding the heinous crimes perpetrated by members of this group in the name of Islam. Furthermore, a number of non-Muslims have questioned the stance of Sunni Islam regarding the actions of ISIS. Given the false categorization of the followers of ISIS as Sunni Muslims that has proliferated in the public imagination, many non-Muslims are seeking clarity as to what degree the views and actions of ISIS represent Sunni Islam.
The actions of ISIS contradict the Shariah, their claims to a caliphate are invalid, and fighting against them is an obligation for those in the region in order to dismantle their criminal entity.
The need for clarity is intensified by the fact that a number of Western media outlets have jumped at the opportunity to promote a false equivalency between the ideology of ISIS and the position of mainstream Muslims - Fox News being the most prominent among them. These media outlets have found substantial material in this group's fatwas, positions and crimes to promote a fear of Islam among the Western populations, in a time where the tide of moderate Islam in the West is rising, as is the number of those entering the faith.
Due to the gravity of the subject and my obligation to expound upon the ruling of Allah Almighty concerning it, I have compiled a concise book and made it a detailed fatwa explaining the legal ruling of fighting the Khawarij in general and ISIS in particular. I derive the conclusions that the actions of ISIS are in complete contradiction to the Shariah, that their claims to a caliphate are invalid, and that fighting against them is a legal obligation for those in the region in order to dismantle their criminal entity.
The Khawarij are a sect which appeared in the first century of Islam and have manifested throughout the centuries since. It deviated from mainstream Islam and was known for killing Muslims under allegations of takfir, which means accusing a Muslim of becoming an apostate. According to the words of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), the followers the Khawarij are described as "the dogs of Hell" and "the worst of both men and animals."
Although the historical sect of the Khawarij does not exist today, we have clear proofs in the Prophetic Traditions that it would emerge at various times throughout the centuries of Islam. The comparison between the crimes and practices of ISIS and the description of the Khawarij mentioned in the words (hadith) of the Prophet elicits my conclusion that ISIS is the modern-day Khawarij, implying that its followers are deviators and that fighting them is obligatory.
Every imam, speaker and teacher of faith in Islamic institutions carries a responsibility before Allah Almighty to rescue the laity from the clutches of disbelief, misguidance, death and destruction.
ISIS uses Islam and fanciful notions of jihad to recruit the youth and deceive Muslims around the world who feel oppressed by conjuring dreams of establishing an Islamic State from China to the Atlantic that would protect their interests. The question is, do the followers of ISIS not realize that their mission is impossible to achieve? The answer is clearly no, because they live in a world of false prophecies and delusions, believing a miracle will enable them to emerge victorious.
For this reason, they are happy to destabilize the region, tear Syria and Iraq apart, draw the United States into a military intervention and provoke Iran. By fighting the world, they have an underlying goal that we should never allow to happen: to provoke the West against the Muslim world, thus giving legitimacy to their fight and an impetus for angry Muslims to join their cause.
It is thus worth pointing out the overwhelming suspicion surrounding this group, its instigators, its alliances and its objectives. Who is behind ISIS? How did it succeed in dominating Mosul and Ramadi? Why does it target the militias fighting the Assad regime in Syria? Why is it attempting to eradicate any history in the region through demolishing relics? Why is it propelling minorities to migrate from the region? Why is it persecuting Sunni Muslims? Why is it sparking hatred between sects and sowing dissension between clans that have lived harmoniously for centuries? Why is it making deals with the same Syrian regime that it professes to oppose?
These are all questions that raise significant doubt and suspicion, emphasizing the point that perhaps there are nefarious strategists behind the rise of ISIS, and that Islam is nothing but a cloak worn by this group to fulfil ulterior motives, thereby distorting the image of Islam in the public conscious and portraying it as a barbaric religion far removed from civilization, humanity, mercy and justice.
ISIS is instigating a vast propaganda campaign and justifying the heinous crimes it is committing under the pretext of supporting Islam and implementing the Shariah, thereby attracting the hearts of many of the laity. Every imam, speaker and teacher of faith in Islamic institutions and colleges carries a responsibility before Allah Almighty to rescue them from the clutches of disbelief, misguidance, death and destruction.
The strength of Muslims is not in their numbers or material resources, but rather in their belief, humility and obedience to Allah Almighty.
Lest despair arise over the proliferation of this criminal group, I bear glad tidings to Muslims that victory over these Khawarij is imminent. Whoever dies at the hands of this group is the best of martyrs, and whoever remains patient shall be rewarded and shall witness victory.
Islam has endured many malevolent groups, trials, and calamities throughout history, and through its justice and mercy, as well as its adherence to the pious scholars and righteous believers, it has prevailed. The strength of Muslims is not in their numbers or material resources, as proven by the words of Allah Almighty ("And on the day of Hunayn: behold! Your great numbers elated you, but they availed you naught" [9:25]), but rather in their belief, humility and obedience to Allah Almighty and their submission to Him. This was the state of the Muslims in the battle of Badr and Allah Almighty said regarding them, "Truly Allah helped you at Badr, when you were a contemptible little force" (3:123).
The pious predecessors of the first generations provided the most superior and relevant example for all posterity: spreading Islam, opening the way for humanity to embrace it, and establishing a civilization - not by force, compulsion, or oppression, but rather by showing good character. Their excellence in conduct was rooted in being truthful in their interaction with non-Muslims, fulfilling their promises, establishing justice even when challenged, threatened, or defeated, and showing mercy to enemies before showing it to friends.
In their example we find the culmination of sincerity and God-consciousness filling their hearts, mercy dwelling in their chests, and justice governing their intellects. Their model exemplifies the power of belief when coupled with good character.
When our pious predecessors took the Messenger of Allah (PBUH) as their role model in worship and conduct without separating one aspect from the other, they became great and true leaders who inspired the world. They saw how the Prophet pardoned his enemies after thirteen years of oppression and eight years of wars, including the pardoning of Wahshi, the killer of his own paternal uncle Hamza, and the pardoning of Hind, the woman who chewed Hamza's liver upon his martyrdom. They understood the Prophet's definition of a Muslim when he said, "The perfect Muslim is he from whom others are safe from his tongue and hand." This is how a Muslim is recognized by the rest of humanity and how his or her belief is relevant to the society in which he or she lives.
The pious predecessors of the first generations provided the most superior example for all posterity: being truthful in their interaction with non-Muslims, fulfilling their promises, establishing justice even when threatened, and showing mercy to enemies before showing it to friends.
As time passed and true faith became diluted, some of these principles were forgotten, thus paving the way for small fanatical groups which claimed a monopoly on true Islam to emerge. Others grew disillusioned, partly due to the cultural shock of the West and its ideals, and therefore abandoned their history and neglected their heritage, falling victim to the media's portrayal of Islam as a barbaric religion incompatible with modernity. In the process, we left the unique qualities of our faith, which creates an unbreakable link between the theological and spiritual foundations and the social and ethical conduct expected of its believers, as was demonstrated to us in perfection by our Prophet (PBUH).
Consequently, the Muslim nation as a whole plunged from strength to weakness, from honour to humiliation, from a revered community to one of disrepute. The only cure is to return to the supreme example presented by the Messenger of Allah (PBUH) by adhering to his Sunna, embracing his guidance, adorning ourselves with his character, and following his heirs: the pious predecessors and righteous scholars.
The foundational ethics of Islam are based on mercy, wisdom and justice. The Messenger of Allah (PBUH) was only sent with mercy and wisdom. He said, "Allah, the Most Merciful, is merciful only to those who show mercy. Be merciful to all on the Earth and the Master of the Heavens will show mercy to you." Saladin (d. 1193), the famous Muslim ruler at the time of the Crusader invasion during the Middle Ages, did not enter the annals of history but for his character, justice and good conduct with his adversaries during both peace and war.
The Levant shall always remain a cornerstone of Islam, a pillar of the Qur'an, and a land of saints. Its people, especially the Syrians, will remain content with His divine decree, enduring hardships with patience and ever in a state of gratitude for His apparent and subtle blessings.
Cradle of the Quran, swords of Islam
Land of the Abdal, the nation of Sham
Spring of champions, throughout time
Saladin is calling you!

No matter how long it takes, victory is near, as promised by Allah Almighty. However, the real question is not when will victory come, but rather, do we deserve it? If we do not, then we should endeavour to fulfil the conditions of victory within ourselves if we hope to witness it around us.
From the very onset of the uprising in Syria, I have exposed the reality of the Assad regime, fought against it, and disapproved of its crimes in public forums and on the Friday pulpit. I have never hesitated in my positions; however, I cannot accept among our ranks in the war against this regime anyone who perverts the religion, distorts the reality of jihad, deceives the people of the Levant, steals the fruits of their struggles, and tortures them, especially after the Assad regime mastered torture techniques against its own people for over half a century.
The distance between ISIS and the noble qualities of the Messenger of Allah (PBUH) as the distance between the east and the west.
Just as I saw the beginning of the end for the Assad regime, I also see the beginning of the end for this sinister group. This is because their followers are destroying the religion from within, striking at the hearts of Muslims, and replacing the corpus of knowledge, jurisprudence and principles of legal judgments that have reached us with the words of ignorant men. These men have never smelt the scent of knowledge and have not embodied even the lowest level of piety, and have not tasted humility in obedience towards Allah Almighty. The distance between them and the noble qualities of the Messenger of Allah (PBUH) as the distance between the east and the west.
Every science has its own experts, many of whom would spend fifty years reading, revising, researching, teaching and authoring. If they were asked regarding an issue they would stop and ponder. They would not be content with what they acquired throughout their lives, but would persist in contemplation and reflection. They would resolve an issue through revision and research out of fear of Allah Almighty lest they show haste in making a legal judgement or err in giving fatwa.
"There are people of knowledge who are qualified
Every one of them has an awe-inspiring figure
Everyone admits that he is ignorant
When he is like a vast ocean of knowledge
Due to his silence, you think that such a scholar is ignorant
But he is always like a steady mountain
The moment you ask him a difficult question
You hear the clearest and most enriching answer

There is no scholar among these criminals who is an authority for Muslims, whether in belief, jurisprudence, or legal judgements. There isn't even a student of knowledge among them who has taken from trustworthy experts, so how can they embark on issuing fatwas and giving legal verdicts? They pass judgement about killing without a second thought, as though slaughtering humans is easier than slaughtering livestock.
The followers of ISIS are destroying the religion from within, replacing the corpus of knowledge and principles of legal judgments with the words of ignorant men.
Abu Salama once asked 'A'isha regarding the actions that necessitate a ritual bath (ghusl). She responded by saying, "Do you know what you are like, O Abu Salama? You are like the chick who hears the roosters crowing and starts crowing with them." She said this either because he was young or because he delved into something unsuitable for him. So how is it then that we are confronted by a group of youth who are less than beginners in knowledge, yet they readily anathematize Muslims and arbitrarily pass judgements to kill, imprison, kidnap, and loot? To describe them as ignorant is an understatement, as a man may be excused due to ignorance but:
"His ignorance is compound yet
Evident as he looks like a learner"

Sunni Muslims in Iraq have suffered from the injustice of the Maliki regime and the people of Syria have suffered from the terror of the Assad regime. Then came ISIS to increase the injustice and terror, leaving the innocent citizens of Iraq and Syria stranded between two horrific options.
I say to those who are exposed to injustice and oppression in Syria or Iraq: Have patience as victory is near. Don't let despair or revenge lead you to being deceived by ISIS and joining it. ISIS only wants to subjugate, enslave and humiliate you by using the name of religion instead of dictatorship or socialism.
O Allah! Bless us with awe of you and piety.
Fill our hearts with what pleases you.
Enable us to act with knowledge and to conduct ourselves with patience,
for truly you are the All-Hearing.

O Allah! Help your oppressed servants.
Make us your inheritors and
use us to guide humanity, speak the truth, and aid the troubled.

O Allah! Bestow your mercy upon us and upon our martyrs.
Cure us and heal our injured. Grace us with your kindness and
alleviate the sadness that afflicts us.

O Allah! Amend our situation,
put our affairs in order, and unite us.

O Allah! Return the people of Syria to their homes,
free us from these depraved criminals, and
spread peace and security in our lands.

O Most Merciful! You are most generous.
All praise belongs to Allah, Lord of the Worlds.

Shaykh Muhammad Al-Yaqoubi is a world-renowned Islamic scholar of theology, jurisprudence and Prophetic tradition, and a spiritual leader of thousands of Muslims across the globe. He has been named one of the world's most influential Muslims for the past five years.
Prior to being forced into exile, Shaykh Al-Yaqoubi was a teacher in the famous Grand Umayyad Mosque of Damascus. He was one of the first scholars to denounce the Assad regime in Syria and, subsequently, the rise of the Islamic State. He has been active participant in the attempt to form a credible political alternative to the Assad government and has campaigned internationally for the provision of humanitarian aid for Syrian refugees.
His most recent book is Refuting ISIS: A Rebuttal of Its Religious and Ideological Foundations, from which is article is adapted.

Saving Islam from the Deceit and Depravity of the Islamic State – Opinion – ABC Religion & Ethics (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Flashback to February 2015: Islamic State threatens to flood Europe with refugees

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Efstathiadis) — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 08:29:00 +0000

By Robert Spencer September 3, 2015

While the world is consumed with horror over the plight of the refugees now flooding into Europe, it is useful to remember these threats that were made just six months ago.

“Islamic State ‘planning to use Libya as gateway to Europe,'” by Ruth Sherlock and Colin Freeman, Telegraph, February 17, 2015:

Islamic State militants are planning a takeover of Libya as a “gateway” to wage war across the whole of southern Europe, letters written by the group’s supporters have revealed.
The jihadists hope to flood the north African state with militiamen from Syria and Iraq, who will then sail across the Mediterranean posing as migrants on people trafficking vessels, according to plans seen by Quilliam, the British anti-extremist group.
The fighters would then run amok in southern European cities and also try to attack maritime shipping.
The document is written by an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) propagandist who is believed to be an important online recruiter for the terror in Libya, where security has collapsed in the wake of the revolution that unseated Colonel Gaddafi in 2011.
The group has already established Libyan-based cells, who on Sunday released a video showing a mass beheading of 21 Egyptian Christian guest workers.
The video, which prompted Egypt to launch retaliatory bombing raids on Isil positions in Libya, included footage of a khaki-clad militant pointing a bloodstained finger northwards, declaring: “We will conquer Rome, by Allah’s permission.”
The Isil propagandist, who uses the alias Abu Arhim al-Libim, describes Libya as having “immense potential” for Isil. He points out with relish that it is awash with weapons from the Libyan civil war, when large quantities of Col Gaddafi’s arsenals were appropriated by rebels. Some of those weapons came from Britain, which supplied the Gaddafi regime with machine guns, sniper rifles and ammunition during his final years in power, when he was seen as an ally against Islamist terrorism.
Mr Libim also points out that Libya is less than around 300 miles from parts of the nearest European mainland.
He writes: “It has a long coast and looks upon the southern Crusader states, which can be reached with ease by even a rudimentary boat.”
He also cites “the number of trips known as ‘illegal immigration’ from this coast, which are huge in number … if this was even partially exploited and developed strategically, pandemonium could be wrought in the southern European states and it is even possible that there could be a closure of shipping lines and targeting of Crusader ships and tankers.”…

“ISIS Threatens to Flood Europe and Elsewhere as ‘Libyan Refugees,'” by S. Noble, Independent Sentinel, February 19, 2015:

Quilliam Foundation reports that ISIS/ISIL/IS plans to use Libya as a gateway to Europe, sending fighters masked as refugees.
They are urging fighters to flood into Libya from Syria and Iraq to then head for Italy and elsewhere.
Quilliam, the British anti-extremist think tank translated and analysed a document written by an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) propagandist who uses the alias Abu Arhim al-Libim.
The document is entitled, “Libya: The Strategic Gateway for the Islamic State”, on why jihadists needed to urgently flock to Libya to assist supporters of the so-called caliphate in their jihad.
Libim pointed out that Libya is only 300 miles from some parts of Europe.
The document states that Libya is awash with Gaddafi’s arsenal of weapons and has “immense potential.”
Libim writes: “It has a long coast and looks upon the southern Crusader states, which can be reached with ease by even a rudimentary boat.”…
When ISIS/ISIL recently executed 21 Christian Egyptians in Libya, the terrorist pointed a bloody finger north and said, “We will conquer Rome, by Allah’s permission.”

Flashback to February 2015: Islamic State threatens to flood Europe with refugees

Migrant crisis: Hundreds of asylum seekers march along Hungary highway; thousands more arrive in Munich

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Efstathiadis) — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 07:52:00 +0000

Photo: Hundreds of asylum seekers march on highway towards Budapest. (Reuters: Marko Djurica)
Related Story: Christians to get priority as PM faces pressure to take in refugees
Related Story: Britain and France vow to accept tens of thousands of asylum seekers
Map: Hungary
Hundreds of people have broken through a police line near an asylum seeker centre and marched against oncoming traffic on a highway headed for Budapest.
Key points

Asylum seekers march on highway headed for Budapest
Hundreds of asylum seekers enter Denmark
Thousands arrive and depart from Munich

The group of about 300 walked some 15 kilometres along the M5 highway before police negotiators persuaded them to board buses to take them back to a nearby registration camp for asylum seekers.
Police earlier closed a section of the highway near Roszke in south-east Hungary close to the Serbian border after the group climbed over a barrier and onto the road, which leads to the capital.
The group was part of a 1,000-strong crowd who had earlier pushed past a police line at an asylum seeker collection point at Roszke — the first stop before people are brought to the registration camp.
There were scuffles throughout Monday as asylum seekers chanting "Freedom!" protested at having to wait for hours in the open for buses to take them for registration.
Clashes have broken out between police and asylum seekers, sick of the long delays at the overcrowded collection and registration camp at Roszke, the main crossing point for the thousands of people who have been coming into Hungary every day for the last month.

What isn't acceptable in my view is that some people are saying this has nothing to do with them.
German chancellor Angela Merkel

Police fired tear gas after stones were thrown at officials at the registration camp on Friday.
Some 300 asylum seekers fled the camp earlier, forcing authorities to close the main border crossing with Serbia for around an hour, although they were later caught by police.
About 167,000 migrants have entered Hungary illegally so far this year, with most crossing the border around the Roszke area.
Last Friday, among a raft of anti-migrant laws approved, Hungary's parliament voted to criminalise illegal border crossing, with the ruling expected to come into force on September 15.
Migrant crisis spills into Denmark

Europe's migrant crisis spilled into Denmark on Monday as some 800 people entered the country from Germany and tried to head to Sweden while politicians argued about Copenhagen's immigration policies.
Prime minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told journalists after an emergency meeting of political party leaders that most of the 800 to 1,000 people who had come to Denmark since Saturday would not seek asylum in the country.
Mr Rasmussen, head of a new minority government dependent on support from a right-wing party, said border controls were no solution, criticised European Union states for not following rules on asylum seekers and said those who had entered over the weekend must register in the country.
The prime minister said the asylum seekers should seek shelter for the night and wait until Danish police coordinated their transfer to Sweden with Swedish authorities.
"We hopefully can reach a situation where people who want to seek asylum in Sweden can do that," he said.
"As a Danish authority, we cannot support people getting to Sweden, if it does not happen with a degree of acceptance from the Swedish authorities."
Danish television channels on Monday showed videos of asylum seekers taking trains from Jutland, in the western part of Denmark connected to Germany, to Copenhagen, where they can ride to Sweden in 35 minutes by train.
Photo: More than 4,000 asylum seekers arrived in Munich on Monday alone. (ABC News: Barbara Miller)
Thousands continue to arrive in Munich

Struggling to cope with record numbers of asylum seekers, Germany told its European partners on Monday they too must take in more refugees.
"I am happy that Germany has become a country that many people outside of Germany now associate with hope," German chancellor Angela Merkel said at a news conference in Berlin

At the scene: Munich train station
Europe correspondent Barbara Miller reports from Munich's train station.
Throughout the day trains have arrived in Munich carrying more and more asylum seekers.
The wild clapping and huge crowds greeting the first arrivals at the weekend have disappeared — but there are still many Germans turning up offering to help.
Anyone who comes to help is directed to a makeshift reception centre where they can hand over donations or give their time. People are being sought who are prepared to work through the night greeting new arrivals.
One woman who doesn't want to speak on camera stands quietly watching the scene at the station. She says she feels so much for the people coming because her family fled East Germany when she was a young girl just before the Berlin Wall went up.
Her parents took her but left her younger sister behind so that the authorities would believe them that they were coming back to East Germany after a visit to relatives in the West.
It was two years before she saw her sister again. Tears well up in her eyes as she recounts the story.
It's an emotional time not just for the asylum seekers — but also for the country receiving them.
But she and her vice chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, coupled their message of optimism with a warning to European Union partners who have resisted a push from Berlin, Paris and Brussels to agree to quotas for refugees flowing in mainly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Photo: Locals at the Munich train station ask how they can help asylum seekers arriving from Syria. (ABC News: Barbara Miller)

"What isn't acceptable in my view is that some people are saying this has nothing to do with them," Ms Merkel said.
"This won't work in the long-run. There will be consequences although we don't want that."
Officials in Bavaria, the southern German state that has become the entry point for asylum seekers arriving from Hungary via Austria, said about 4,400 had arrived in Munich on Monday.
Another 1,500 were on trains heading on to cities elsewhere in Germany.
German and Austrian officials appear to have been caught off guard by the numbers.
"It has now reached a volume that is already considerable," Christoph Hillenbrand, president of the government of Upper Bavaria, told reporters at Munich train station.
He said buses that could take 1,000 people north to cities like Dortmund, Hamburg, Braunschweig and Kiel had been made available, but that asylum seekers had also been streaming out of temporary accommodation facilities on foot.
At Munich's international trade fair grounds, three halls have been given over to the effort, with more than 2,000 camp beds and a dining hall with hot food.
Ms Merkel's welcome to asylum seekers has been praised by human rights groups.
But there were signs of dissent within her conservative camp, with officials from the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), sister party of her Christian Democrats, criticising her handling of the crisis.
"There is no society that could cope with something like this," CSU leader and Bavarian premier Horst Seehofer said.
"The federal government needs a plan here."
While many Germans have welcomed the refugees, there have also been attacks on shelters, including two early on Monday.
AFP/Reuters

Migrant crisis: Hundreds of asylum seekers march along Hungary highway; thousands more arrive in Munich - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Toying with Russian troop deployment to Syria, Putin appears ready to reset relations with US

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Efstathiadis) — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 02:08:00 +0000

Associated Press Published September 07, 2015

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, speaks during a meeting with his supporters in Moscow, Russia, Monday, Sept. 7, 2015 Putin took part in a discussion on Monday of a health care reform with his supporters who form All-Russian People’s Front. Stanislav Govorukhin, Russian lawmaker and movie director sits at left. (Mikhail Klimentyev/RIA-Novosti, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP) (The Associated Press)
MOSCOW – Signs of an ongoing Russian military build-up in Syria have drawn U.S. concerns and raised questions of whether Moscow plans to enter the conflict. President Vladimir Putin has been coy on the subject, saying Russia is weighing various options, a statement that has fuelled suspicions about the Kremlin's intentions.
Observers in Moscow say the Russian manoeuvring could be part of a plan to send troops to Syria to fight the Islamic State group in the hope of fixing fractured ties with the West. They warn, however, that Putin would likely find it hard to sell his idea to a sceptical U.S. and risks potentially catastrophic repercussions if he opts for unilateral military action in Syria.
By playing with the possibility of joining the anti-IS coalition, Putin may hope to win a few key concessions. His main goal: the lifting of Western sanctions and the normalization of relations with the United States and the European Union, which have sunk to their lowest point since the Cold War amid the Ukrainian crisis. In addition, the Russian leader may be angling to make the West more receptive to Moscow's involvement in Ukraine, while retaining influence in Syria.
Early this summer, the Kremlin put forward a peace plan for Syria that envisions enlisting Syrian government forces and Iran in the anti-IS coalition. A few rounds of negotiations with the Americans and Saudis have brought no visible results, and now Moscow appears to be testing the water for a next move: beefing up its military presence in Syria.
While Putin said Friday there is no talk "just yet" about Russian troops joining the fight against the Islamic State, he seemed to keep the door open for the possibility, saying "we are looking at various options." The Russian leader is set to attend the United Nations General Assembly later this month, and some analysts say a proposal to deploy troops to Syria could be the focal point of his visit.
Since the Soviet times, Russia has had close political and military ties with Syria, which hosts a Russian navy facility in the Mediterranean port of Tartus intended to service and supply visiting ships. While the Soviet-era facility has just a couple of floating piers along with a few rusting repair shops and depots, it has symbolic importance as the last remaining Russian military outpost outside the former Soviet Union.
Moscow has staunchly backed Syrian President Bashar Assad throughout the nation's 4 ½-year civil war, providing his regime with weapons and keeping military advisers in Syria. Putin said again Friday that Russia is providing the Syrian military with weapons and training.
Rami Abdurrahman, the head of the Britain-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said there have been reports since mid-August of Russian troops in the capital's airport and another airport in the coastal city of Latakia.
"We don't know if they are troops or transporters of weapons and ammunition," he said, noting an increase in the flow of Russian weapons arriving in Syria since July.
"The fact that (military cooperation) is not new is one thing, but there is a noticeable increase," said Abdurrahman, who has a large network of activists on the ground in Syria helping him monitor the situation.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry signalled Washington's concern in a phone call with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov over the weekend. The State Department said that Kerry made it clear that if reports of an imminent Russian military build-up in Syria were accurate, "these actions could further escalate the conflict, lead to greater loss of innocent life, increase refugee flows and risk confrontation with the anti-ISIL Coalition operating in Syria."
According to a U.S. defence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to publicly discuss the sensitive issue, the U.S. has seen an increasing number of Russian transport planes seeking diplomatic approval for flights into Syria. He said it's not clear what is in the aircraft or what their purpose is.
Greek Foreign Ministry spokesman Constantinos Koutras said the U.S. has asked Greece to cancel over flight permission given to Russia September 1-24, for flights headed to Syria. He said they are examining the request.
The U.S. officials, who declined to be identified because they weren't authorized to speak publicly about the issue, said they also have seen the movement of some prefabricated housing in Syria, although they haven't seen any troops moving in or becoming involved in actual combat activities, as some media reports suggested.
Sergei Karaganov, the founder of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, a leading association of Russian political experts, said that Russia was considering the possibility of joining the anti-IS coalition, but the West so far has been unwelcoming. "They are reluctant to accept proposals from Putin, whom they want to contain," he said.
Karaganov, who has good connections among the Russian officials, said he doesn't expect Russia to opt for unilateral military action in Syria if it gets the cold shoulder from the U.S. and its allies. "It would involve enormous risks," he said.
Igor Korotchenko, a retired colonel of the Russian military's General Staff who is now editor of the National Defence magazine, also said that while Russia has supplied Assad's government with weapons, it has no intention to send its troops to Syria.
"Russia will not send its troops to the Middle East, it's absolutely excluded," he said. "It's the U.S. problem. Russia will not pay for that with its soldiers' lives."
Alexander Golts, an independent military analyst, said Putin sees joining the anti-IS coalition as a chance to reach rapprochement with the West. "Russia has found itself in isolation, which has been increasingly felt," he said.
He said the latest reports about the movements of troops and military cargos to Syria appeared to demonstrate Moscow's readiness to join the coalition, falling short of a big-size deployment.
Pavel Felgenhauer, a Moscow-based analyst who specializes in military and security issues, said that the apparent increase in the Russian presence in Syria could be part of Kremlin efforts to raise the pressure on the U.S. to accept Putin's plan.
"Such a coalition ... would allow Assad's regime to survive and allow Russia to maintain its presence in the Middle East," he said.
If Russia ends up sending its military contingent to Syria, it will likely include a few combat jets along with support personnel and some troops to guard them, Felgenhauer said. Staying away from ground action would allow Russia to avoid any significant losses.
Alexei Malashenko, a Middle East expert with the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow office, was sceptical, saying that Putin's apparent plan to use Syria to improve ties with the West will be unlikely to succeed.
He warned that if Russia fails to strike a deal with the U.S. and tries to do it alone alongside Assad's forces, it would further damage its relations not just with the U.S. but regional powers. It will also likely trigger a negative public response, providing a painful reminder of the botched Soviet war in Afghanistan.
"It will not be received with joy here in Russia; everyone will compare it to Afghanistan," he said. "If they do it, it would be a very stupid thing. It's very simple to get in, but it could be quite difficult to get out."
Malashenko also warned that deploying Russian soldiers to fight the IS would draw risks of retaliation and raise the terror threat for Russia.
While launching unilateral action would be extremely risky, it's difficult to predict how Putin will act if his offer of joint action against the IS is rejected by Washington, Malashenko said.
"Putin is unpredictable, and he is very emotional," he said.
___
Lolita Baldor in Washington, Sarah El Deeb in Cairo and Elena Becatoros in Athens contributed to this report.

Toying with Russian troop deployment to Syria, Putin appears ready to reset relations with US | Fox News

Germany’s response to the refugee crisis is admirable. But I fear it cannot last

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Efstathiadis) — Mon, 07 Sep 2015 05:49:00 +0000

Doris Akrap Sunday 6 September 2015

A willingness to help Syrian refugees is sweeping the nation. How Germany deals with the long-term consequences of its generosity is equally important

Borussia Dortmund supporters hold a banner showing their support for refugees. Photograph: Frank Augstein/AP
Sometimes German words end up having an international career. Kindergarten is one of them, Blitzkrieg another. Willkommenskultur could be next. With its uniquely German ring of bureaucratese and poetics, Willkommenskultur means “welcome culture” and is a word not born of custom but created to establish one.

Migration crisis: Germany presses Europe into sharing refugees

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Coined by politicians a few years ago, it was originally meant to be the siren call that would attract people from other countries to come to Germany and compensate for a big shortage of skilled workers in vast, sparsely populated areas such as Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
These days Willkommenskultur is used to encourage help for the hundreds of thousands of refugees coming to Germany. And thousands of Germans have pitched in; they take food and clothes to the camps, take refugees to meetings with the authorities in their own cars, pay their fares, foot their medical bills, teach German, translate forms, share couches and bikes, act as nannies, open up soccer clubs, schools and kindergartens for refugee kids, and go on demonstrations against right-wing attacks across the country.
Those with a particularly sensitive ear may detect an air of passive aggression in the manner in which Germans seek to highlight their goodness these days. The public mood is so empathically pro-refugee, you’d feel guilty if you didn’t at least do the bare minimum, such as offer your spare bed to a Syrian. It’s as if a year after the World Cup triumph in Rio, Germans desperately want to be world champions again – this time as the globe’s most welcoming country for refugees.
And yet, there is something new to all this. The last time there was a major spike in immigration into Germany, in the 90s, refugees were largely left to their own devices. Only the radical left, the churches and a few engaged private individuals offered organised help. All the while they were coming under direct attack from neo-Nazis in Hoyerswerda or Rostock-Lichtenhagen. This became a worldwide symbol of the new “ugly German”. With overseas prestige under threat, the majority reacted: even middle-sized towns got their own Rock Against Racism gig and the government organised candle-lit demonstrations. For all that, in 1993, the Bundestag de facto abolished the right of asylum. When that occurred, it was left once again to left-wing activists, the churches and immigrants to protest. The plight of the other had once again become a niche concern.
Many refugees organised themselves to fight for their political agenda, but they were often hamstrung by the reality of their lives in the migrant camps. Finding a job, and thus integrating into society, and living in constant fear of deportation was exhausting. For at least a decade afterwards, the numbers of refugees coming to Germany dropped. It’s around that time that the detached discourse around Willkommenskultur was established.
But here we are in 2015, watching TV reports of refugees arriving to applause in Munich or those still in transit in Hungary chanting “Germany! Germany!”, for the country where they hope to find conditions for a dignified life. Whatever way you look at it, this is a turning point.
Indeed, another word that is frequently popping up in civil discourse these days is Wende: “turning point”. The term might imply that the rules of the EU today can’t be the rules of the EU tomorrow. But the refugees haven’t time to wait for “us” to work out whether Dublin III or Schengen need to be overhauled . The breakdown of these agreements is already happening.
But as the Germans share their bread with the refugees, Angela Merkel made clear in her speech on Monday that she won’t accept Italy, Greece or Hungary not pulling their weight and opening their borders. She also made clear that all the refugees from the Balkan states will be send back immediately, as they are not in need of protection.
As a child of a “guest worker” who grew up in Germany in the 90s, I can’t claim to be completely impartial about this debate. Phrases such as “Germany can’t take all refugees in the world” or “They can stay, but do they really need an apartment on their own?” give me the creeps. I hear them from conservative politicians. I hear them from colleagues and friends, none of them racist. Butsuch comments remind me of those flung at my father, whose family was killed by the Nazis in Yugoslavia. Even after 30 years of living and working in Germany he had to listen to people telling him: “Isn’t it nice that we let you work here?”
Maybe my fears are as arbitrary as the resentments of right-wing Germans who demonstrate in front of refugee shelters in Dresden or Heidenau. But when I listen to the “good Germans”, I often ask myself: what is going to happen, when the new refugees demand more than a tent, a bottle of water and a slice of bread? How will German society deal with this next turning point? What if it turns out that not every refugee has the skills to equip them for the “made in Germany” brand? Will Willkommenskultur end, when it involves not just singing Hallelujah together, but helping people to become autonomous and articulate their own wishes? Will the liberal segment of German society that is drawing so much praise right now have the determination to fight their own government and abolish Dublin III and Schengen? Or will “Willkommen” be just a slogan on the doormat again?

Comment by aleksiasinitchkina
The Schengen agreement requires refugees to seek asylum in the first country they enter under the EU’s Dublin accord. Under the Dublin accord, before it was changed, it stated that it would only examine refugee applications in one state within the Dublin zone to ensure that asylum seekers may not be sent from one country to another. For legitimate reasons, this was implemented. Lets look at the big picture here, by scrapping the Dublin accord makes the Schengen Agreement a de facto, even if Germany tries to justify it by arguing that it would speed up the refugee movement process, nevertheless an influx of illegal Syrian migrants (now deemed legal according to the changes declared in the Dublin accord) is expected to overpopulate Germany with a whopping 800k figure, this year alone. This will lead to catastrophic consequences that Europeans will have to endure i.e imposed levies, crowded housing, increased unemployment, not to mention the criminals and human traffickers. Don't forget, this is on top of the outstanding economic instability that exists in Europe prolonged by the EU and bankers I.e Greece who is basically on life support who have already had 200,000 migrants enter this year, legal and illegally. Also how does Germany expect to sustain their own countries economy referring to Goldman-Sachs outstanding proportions of money loaned to Greece when It's irrefutably clear that they are incapable of paying pack. These are just some of the consequences that EU and banker control have had. Don't think for one moment that They wouldn't happily use the refugee crisis to their advantage as a decoy in their schemes to distract Europeans from political scandals. The EU members, Germany, Austria are going about this the wrong way. Europe needs to help themselves before they start thinking about taking in outrageous proportions of refugees then they can handle. Europe is hanging by a very thin thread.
As for the Hungarian officials in Budapest Killeti, they are not the 'bullies' as so many of you say, if anyone is a bully it's a spineless government who chooses to give in to political peer pressure and allow destruction of their own country by migrant influx on biblical scales, at the cost of the working class people. The solution is this, address the wars, collaborate with Allies, the time for talking is over, send troops down, stop the boats from leaving the ports in Libya. We need to control the flow of refugees, check paper work, and send direct aid to minorities in refugee camps who urgently need the help. Pull them out if we need too. The process of refugee movement should be in moderation using an orderly selection process, It's extremely irresponsible for Germany to allow an open door policy, which only exacerbates the migration crisis and further compromise migration policies of the European Union.
Lastly, just to make it clear for everyone, any asylum seeker is a person seeking protection from their own country, but has not yet received refuge status. By arriving illegally means automatically, will be determine if you are a refugee escaping prosecution from your own country. Once you are granted refuge status then you may reside in the selected country you applied asylum for. A good portion of these refugees become economic migrants when they Abandon their country of asylum and move into another country. Anyone who says otherwise is blind or delusional as is obvious in the pictures we see of Syrians dressed in nice flashy clothing, walking through international borders like we have rolled out the red carpet for them, and making ridiculous acts of protests lying on the floor with cardboard signs when they could be sitting in refuge centres eating meals and sleeping in beds and waiting in line like the rest of us would.
In short, by 'jumping the queue', these economic migrants diminish any chances of a more deserving refugees hoping to acquire resettlement in refugee centres.

Germany’s response to the refugee crisis is admirable. But I fear it cannot last | Doris Akrap | Comment is free | The Guardian

European migrant crisis: Hundreds arrive to applause in Germany as Austria announces plan to phase out emergency measures

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Efstathiadis) — Mon, 07 Sep 2015 04:52:00 +0000

Photo: Well-wishers waved to and clapped migrants as they arrived at the main railway station in Dortmund, Germany. (Reuters: Ina Fassbender)
Related Story: Austria, Germany open borders to asylum seekers offloaded by Hungary
Related Story: Exhausted asylum seekers stream into Austria from Budapest
Map: Germany
Another group of asylum seekers has streamed into Germany to cheers and "welcome" signs, as Austria announces it plans to phase out emergency measures that have allowed thousands who were stranded in Hungary to enter.
Key points:

Migrants arrive to applause, welcome signs as they arrive in Germany
Austrian chancellor says emergency measures will be phased out and calls for emergency European Union meeting to discuss solution
Pope calls on religious community to take in migrant families

The group has joined the thousands who have already arrived in what is the continent's worst refugee crisis since World War II.
Many are fleeing war in the Middle East and hope to take refuge in Germany, Europe's richest country, but the EU is divided over how to cope with the influx which has provoked both huge sympathy and anti-Muslim resentment among Europeans.
Austrian chancellor Werner Faymann said the decision to phase out the emergency measures, a day after the measures were put in place, followed "intensive talks" with German chancellor Angela Merkel and a telephone call with Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban.
"We have always said this is an emergency situation in which we must act quickly and humanely. We have helped more than 12,000 people in an acute situation," he said.
"Now we have to move step-by-step away from emergency measures towards normality, in conformity with the law and dignity."

Photo: A special train service and buses helped transport migrants from the border to Vienna, Austria. (Reuters: Dominic Ebenbichler)

Thousands of migrants and refugees arrived at Budapest's Keleti train station after travelling from Syria through the Balkans and Greece.
Hungary laid on over 100 buses to the border on Saturday night after Austria said it had agreed steps with Germany to waive the normal rules requiring refugees to apply for asylum wherever they enter the EU.
Others set off from the station to make the 170-kilometre journey on foot. The platforms filled up again on Sunday.
Bavarian authorities said 6,800 asylum seekers had arrived in the state's capital, Munich, on Saturday, and Sunday's total was about 13,000. Close to 11,000 are expected today.
In moving scenes, the newcomers, clutching their children and sparse belongings, stepped off trains in Munich, Frankfurt and elsewhere to cheers from well-wishers who held balloons, snapped photos and gave them water and food.
"The people here treat us so well, they treat us like real human beings, not like in Syria," said Mohammad, a 32-year-old from the devastated town of Qusayr.
"We are happy in Germany but we are very tired because it is very dangerous — one month Turkey and Greece," another said.
At the scene: Munich train station
Europe correspondent Barbara Miller reports from Munich's train station.
Some of the asylum seekers arriving in Munich are being escorted straight onto other trains so cordons of police block their way. They're not allowed, I guess, to come into Munich but they're taken onto another train and the idea there is to distribute these asylum seekers on to other parts of Germany.
Some are being given medical assistance. There are some tents and some health workers just outside the station — some people are being given some help there. I saw one man badly limping, he was getting some care.
Over the past few hours, I have not seen the kind of wild jubilant scenes that we saw over the weekend in Germany.
Just about an hour or so ago a group, maybe 100, 150 asylum seekers came off the train there. They were one of those groups who were escorted onto another train.
There was clapping at the station. People waiting there for them. It was also really a sense of people just very curious, wanting to see this incredible phenomenon that was going on in their city.
There are people turning up, there are some men turning up with soft animal toys for children and a woman turning up saying she was qualified medically and could she help out.
So people are here, they are offering help and they are very curious. Certainly no hostile reaction that I have seen here.
Audio: Listen to Barbara Miller's report (AM)
As asylum seekers got off trains, police directed them to waiting buses bound for temporary shelters, which have been set up in public buildings, hotels and army barracks across the country.
"Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here," crowds chanted at the Frankfurt railway station throughout Saturday night.
Germany has said it expects 800,000 asylum seekers this year at a cost of 10 billion euros ($16.1 billion) and urged EU members to open their doors.
While Germany has seen a spate of ugly xenophobic rallies and attacks against foreigners, it has also seen an outpouring of support, donations and volunteer efforts by people who believe the country, given its dark history and current wealth, has a special obligation to help refugees.
Meanwhile, Austrian authorities are continuing to send buses to the Hungarian border to collect more than 1,000 asylum seekers who have spent days stranded there.
While half of the migrants had shelter and camp beds, the rest were forced to sleep out in the open, the BBC reported.
Many were also treated by the Red Cross for various ailments, including exhaustion.
On Sunday they were being taken to reception centres, along with hundreds more who chose to travel from Budapest by train.
Asylum seekers Germany's problem: Hungary

Photo: Asylum seekers search through donated clothes at a distribution centre in Dortmund, Germany after arriving by train. (Reuters: Ina Fassbender)
Politicians in Germany and elsewhere in Europe voiced growing concern about the record numbers, and warned the influx would spell both logistical and political problems.
In Austria, chancellor Faymann said Vienna's assistance was a temporary manifestation of the nation's "goodwill" in the face of a humanitarian emergency.
"There is no alternative to a common European solution," he said, as he called for the EU meeting.

Jordan's refuge of 600,000 Syrians

Jordan has given refuge to more than 600,000 Syrians. But life there is difficult and as Middle East correspondent Sophie McNeill reports, many families have pinned their hopes on making it to Australia.

German chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday spoke by phone with Hungary's prime minister Viktor Orban, who called the asylum seeker wave a "German problem" caused by Berlin's public statement saying it would welcome Syrians.
"Both sides agreed that both Hungary and Germany must meet their European obligations, including their obligations under the Dublin agreement," Ms Merkel's spokesman Georg Streiter said.
Under the EU's so-called Dublin rules, asylum applications must be processed by the country where a person first arrives.
Mr Orban and Ms Merkel agreed the weekend's influx was exceptional, due to the emergency situation in Budapest, Mr Streiter said.
Ms Merkel also faces political pressure at home, where her Bavarian sister party CSU criticised the eased travel rules as "a wrong decision", according to its party secretary Andreas Scheuer.
Members warned this had created "an additional pull-factor", aside from push factors such as war, poverty and repression in their home countries.
Ms Merkel was set to hold a crisis meeting on the refugee issue later on Sunday (local time) with her coalition partners.
Pope urges religious community to take in families

Photo: Crowds in St Peter's Square applauded Pope Francis as he called for the community to help migrant families in need. (AFP: Filippo Monteforte)
Hungary's and other eastern European nations' hard line is in contrast with a show of solidarity elsewhere in Europe.
Today Pope Francis, who is himself the grandson of Italian emigrants to Argentina, called for "every parish, every religious community, every monastery, [and] every sanctuary in Europe take in a family".
There are more than 25,000 parishes in Italy alone, and more than 12,000 in Germany.
The Vatican's two parishes will also take in a family of asylum seekers each in the coming days, Pope Francis said.
He said taking in migrant families was a "concrete gesture" to prepare for the extraordinary Holy Year on the theme of mercy which was due to begin in December
On Saturday, Finnish prime minister Juha Sipila also offered to put up asylum seeker families in his country home.
Under intensifying pressure at home and abroad, British prime minister David Cameron is set to admit 15,000 refugees from Syria, the Sunday Times reported.
European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker proposed relocating 120,000 refugees from overstretched Italy, Greece and Hungary, a European source told AFP.
The plan, which comes on top of a Commission proposal in May for the relocation of 40,000 migrants, is expected to be formally unveiled by Mr Juncker on Wednesday after being approved by commissioners, the source said.
Germany's Welt am Sonntag newspaper reported that under the plan, Germany would take in about 31,000 people, followed by France with 24,000 and Spain with almost 15,000.
The political debate continued as rescuers in Cyprus saved 114 people, including 54 women and children, after their boat ran into trouble off the Mediterranean island, authorities said.
The boat was mainly carrying Syrian asylum seekers, but also some Lebanese and Palestinians from Syria, interior minister Socrates Hasikos said. He said there were no serious injuries.
Cyprus, a member of the European Union, lies just 100 kilometres off the Syrian coast but has so far avoided a mass influx of asylum seekers from the country's conflict.
'I said to myself: Dear God I hope he's alive'

Photo: Turkish police officer Mehmet Ciplak said he thought of his own son when he saw the toddler on the beach. (AFP: Dogan News Agency)
On Saturday, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said 366,402 asylum seekers had crossed the Mediterranean to Europe this year, with 2,800 dying or going missing en route.
The crisis was personified on Wednesday when twelve refugees drowned after two boats sank on the short crossing to Greece, including three-year-old Syrian asylum seeker Aylan Kurdi.

Words cannot describe what a sad and tragic sight it was.
Mehmet Ciplak

A distressing photograph of the toddler's lifeless body, washed ashore in Bodrum in southwest Turkey, pricked the world's conscience.
Turkish police officer Mehmet Ciplak, who was pictured picking up the body said he thought of his own son when he saw the toddler on the beach.
"When I approached the baby, I said to myself, 'Dear God I hope he's alive.' But he showed no signs of life. I was crushed," he told Turkey's Dogan news agency.
"I have a six-year-old son. The moment I saw the baby, I thought about my own son and put myself into his father's place. Words cannot describe what a sad and tragic sight it was."
Aylan was buried on Friday in the Syrian town of Kobane, itself now a symbol of resistance by Syrian Kurds against Islamic State (IS) extremists.

European migrant crisis: Hundreds arrive to applause in Germany as Austria announces plan to phase out emergency measures - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Cheering German crowds greet refugees after long trek from Budapest to Munich

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Efstathiadis) — Sun, 06 Sep 2015 06:11:00 +0000

Emma Graham-Harrison in Budapest and Munich, Patrick Kingsley in Nickelsdorf, Rosie Waites in Vienna and Tracy McVeigh in London Sunday 6 September 2015

As Europe’s politicians continue to bicker, desperate travellers are welcomed and fed as they arrive at German city

Refugees welcomed warmly in Germany

In pouring rain, they crossed the last few metres into Austria in the early hours of Saturday morning. The waiting Austrian police in their heavy waterproofs were taken aback by the refusal of the Hungarian bus drivers to take their passengers the last two kilometres over the border and on to the Nickelsdorf train station where they were expected, and where a Vienna-bound train was waiting.
Instead, the officers had to guide the way with torches, helpless to offer shelter to the tired clusters of men, women and children coming through the puddles at the side of the motorway in the darkness.
From 3am until early afternoon, some 120 blue buses had been and gone, disgorging an estimated 4,000 refugees. Some residents of the small border town of Nickelsdorf were at their windows, others out on the streets with blankets and umbrellas, offering hot drinks.
A Red Cross tent offered respite from the rain, with medics and volunteers working shifts while people waited for their turn to board special half-hourly bus and train services, laid on by the Austrian Federal Railway, to Vienna and Salzburg, and from there to Munich.
“We have treated a two-day-old gunshot wound. We’ve seen eye injuries caused by stun grenades. We’ve seen children with severe bruises,” Red Cross spokesman Andreas Zenker said.

A boy who had arrived on a train from Hungary gets a kiss from a volunteer worker in Munich. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Several people were sent on to nearby hospitals, but Zenker said that most were “gritting their teeth” to continue their journey, despite some walking for almost eight hours through the night.
By midday on Saturday, a total of 3,000 people had arrived, said Colin Turner, volunteers’ spokesman at Munich railway station. German officials expected up to 7,000 to reach the city by the end of the day.
This, said the UN high commissioner for refugees, António Guterres, was a “defining moment” for the 28-nation European Union. Already the heroes and villains of the piece were being laid out – with condemnation of the response of the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, and praise for Germany’s Angela Merkel and the Austrian chancellor, Werner Faymann, who announced they were opening their doors to refugees in the early hours of Saturday.
Around the same time, Hungary unexpectedly decided to provide buses for those who had simply walked out of Budapest on foot, heading for the Austrian border, after being prevented for several days from catching trains out of the capital. Some had been taken to a refugee camp.
In what the Hungarian media called a “day of uprisings”, 350 people had broken through a police cordon on Friday and begun heading to Austria, 85 miles (137km) away, on tracks leading away from the railway station. By late afternoon on Friday, a day after Orbán had warned of a “Muslim threat” to a Christian culture, up to 2,000 people – most from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan – were walking towards the border in chaotic scenes.

Refugee children play at the Austrian-Hungarian border near the village of Nickelsdorf. Photograph: Joe Klamar/AFP/Getty Images
The sudden appearance of blue public buses was a staggering about-turn – and an unexpected rejection of the Dublin regulation, which says refugees seeking asylum should have their application assessed in the first EU country they enter, and which Hungary had insisted on upholding. The country is already under fire for its plans to close and wire-fence its borders, saying it will effectively seal the frontier to migrants as of next week, in the face of EU Schengen rules. The European Council president, Donald Tusk, warned that divisions between western member states and their newer eastern partners were complicating efforts to solve the deepening refugee crisis. “There is a divide … between the east and the west of the EU. Some member states are thinking about containing the wave of migration, symbolised by the Hungarian [border] fence,” Tusk said.
The buses triggered alarm. Many refugees distrusted the Hungarian authorities after some of those camped at Budapest railway station had earlier boarded buses that they were told were heading for the Austrian border, only to end up in a refugee camp in Hungary. Many feared a similar ploy this time. “Who’s organising it, the Hungarians?” asked Ali, a Syrian on the march, after seeing the buses were coming. “Forget it, I’m walking.”
But by the time the last buses arrived at 4.45am, almost everyone was too sodden and tired to worry about politicians’ motives. They squeezed on to the buses, standing in the aisles, sitting on the steps crushed against the doors. Within minutes, most were asleep. In Budapest, a handful of those who remained were reluctant to be processed in Germany because they wanted to join family members elsewhere. “I’m going to London on my own, my brother lives there and you can get a good job,” said Khan Mohammad, who comes from northern Baghlan province. Others had simply missed the convoy to the border.
On Saturday a column of several hundred new arrivals stormed through the station and on to the metro, saying they were heading for Germany. They piled back up the escalators when it emerged they had the wrong train system and on to the mainline platforms where warnings that international trains were not running had now been removed, although without any signs of the trains themselves.
“We must get to Germany,” said Suleiman, 23, from Gaza.
On the road to the border, there were tailbacks for eight kilometres, but many, like Marwan, didn’t mind. His view through the bus window was mainly of drizzle. He had walked for much of Friday in the rain, and he hadn’t slept all night. But by the time dawn rose on Saturday, he had cause to be cheerful. “Finally I’m getting out of Hungary,” he smiled. “I’m happy.”

Route taken by migrants.
In Austria, the mood was one of pride – for the way the government had responded to the crisis and for the overwhelming response from people ferrying donations of food, water and clothes to train stations in Vienna and Salzburg. By Saturday afternoon, officials in Vienna had to ask people to stay away from the station, which was heavily overcrowded with well-wishers bearing donations.
Hundreds of Austrian rail workers pledged to work overtime for free, to drive special refugee trains. Their boss, Christian Kern, called the situation “a huge challenge, a state of emergency”. He said the refugees’ train tickets would not be checked but that the goal was to take them as quickly as possible to their desired destination.

Refugees during heavy rain. Photograph: Frank Augstein/AP
Some Austrians have been driving to the border in private cars and buses with the aim of giving refugees a lift to Vienna, but have been warned by the police not to cross into Hungary as they could be prosecuted there for people-smuggling. Austria’s foreign minister, Sebastian Kurz, said this weekend was a wake-up call for Europe. “This has to be an eye-opener as to how messed up the situation in Europe
Stories such as the discovery of 71 decomposing bodies in a truck near Nickelsdorf last month and the tragedy of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy whose body was washed up on the Turkish coast on Wednesday along with his five-year-old brother and his mother, have horrified people all over the world. An even younger victim of the crisis emerged on Saturday night when a newborn boy was found dead after his parents reached the shores of a Greek island in a boat from Turkey. The baby boy was taken from the island of Agathonisi to a hospital on the nearby island of Samos, where he was pronounced dead, the Greek coastguard service said.
Chaotic and tragic scenes have been witnessed all over Europe but it was Hungary that became the focus of the refugee crisis with the arrival of about 50,000 migrants last month via the western Balkans, with a record 3,300 arriving on Thursday alone, according to UN figures. Hungary responded with tough anti-immigration measures, including its controversial three-metre razor-wire fence. Poor camp conditions and slow registration for asylum seekers have contributed to rising tensions at Hungary’s refugee facilities, but the country blames Germany, which expects to receive 800,000 asylum seekers this year, for declaring it would accept Syrian requests regardless of where they enter the EU.
“What happened is the consequence of the failed migration policy of the European Union and the irresponsible statements made by European politician,” the Hungarian foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, said on Saturday.

A boy reacts as the train departs from Keleti railway station in Budapest. Photograph: Marko Drobnjakovic/AP
Hungary had also insisted there would be no more bus transports. On Saturday morning, in a park near Keleti station, a group of young men fretted about their next move. “We were sent to sleep in a hotel for one night after four nights on the street. I had no idea the government would send buses,” said Rahman, a 26-year-old Syrian from Aleppo, travelling with his wife, sister-in-law and two nephews. “We just wanted a break. Do you know if there will be another coach?” he asked anxiously.
A young Iraqi who had just arrived had not even heard about the coaches. “I just arrived a couple of hours ago. I have no idea about buses,” said Sajad al-Azawi, from Baghdad, who wants to be a computer scientist and is heading to Germany.
On Saturday night at Munich’s main station, dozens of Germans lined up behind police barriers to clap, cheer and distribute sweets to welcome refugees to their new home. A sophisticated official operation provided food and transport to temporary lodging.
“We just wanted them to know that the torture is over,” said Hedy Gupta, a grandmother handing out slabs of chocolate amid welcoming cheers. “I have children and a five-year-old grandchild and when I think what they have been through, these children, it leaves me on the ground.”
Beside her on the barricades of welcome was Waltraud Volger, a legal assistant who lives nearby: “I heard about it on the radio around 1pm today and just gathered what food and clothes I had and came over to donate it and offer to help,” she said. “They have so many volunteers that they haven’t needed me, so I’m just standing here welcoming them with clapping. I’ve never done anything like this before, but when you hear their stories and see the pictures, you can’t just stand by.”
After four hours, she had no plans to leave while the trains were still rolling in.

A refugee looks out of a train window at the central station in Munich. Photograph: Nicolas Armer/dpa/Corbis

Refugees wait for the train to Munich at the western railway station in Vienna. Photograph: Jörg Dieckmann/dpa/Corbis

Cheering German crowds greet refugees after long trek from Budapest to Munich | World news | The Guardian

Asylum seekers arrive in Germany after bus, train journey through Hungary and Austria

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Efstathiadis) — Sun, 06 Sep 2015 05:39:00 +0000

Reuters

Photo: Exhausted migrants rested after arriving at the registration point for migrant arrivals at the main station in Munich, Germany. (Reuters: Michael Dalder)
Related Story: Exhausted asylum seekers stream into Austria from Budapest
Related Story: German business makes case to welcome refugees
Related Story: 'I've paid highest price': Father of drowned Syrian boy buries family
Map: Hungary
Austria and Germany have thrown open their borders to thousands of exhausted asylum seekers, bussed to the Hungarian border by a right-wing government that had tried to stop them but was overwhelmed by the sheer numbers reaching Europe's frontiers.
Key points:

Around 8,000 asylum seekers arrive in Munich
Asylum seekers have travelled from Vienna
More than 6,500 asylum seekers crossed into Austria from Hungary
Situation developing with crowds again gathering in Budapest

Left to walk across the border into Austria, the asylum seekers, many of them fleeing war in Syria, were then whisked by train and shuttle bus to Vienna and then on by train to Munich and other cities in Germany.
The last train carrying an estimated 1,000 asylum seekers pulled into Munich from Austria after midnight, bringing the total to have arrived in the Bavarian capital since Saturday to about 8,000.
A similar total is expected to arrive in Munich later on Sunday.
Clapped and cheered as they disembarked, new arrivals queued at registration tents to be screened, fed and clothed. Most were set to stay in Munich, although more trains took 800 people to Dortmund and 460 to Frankfurt on Saturday evening.
In Salzburg, the last city before the German border, teams from aid organisations and volunteers rushed to pass warm clothes, shoes and cigarettes through the doors of trains stopped at platforms.
Photo: A special train service and buses helped transport migrants from the border to Vienna, Austria. (Reuters: Dominic Ebenbichler)
Munich police said Arabic-speaking interpreters were helping asylum seekers with procedures at the emergency registration centres. The seemingly efficient Austrian and German reception contrasted with the disorder prevalent in Hungary.
"It was just such a horrible situation in Hungary," said Omar, arriving in Vienna with his family.
Another man, who declined to be named, said: "Hungary should be fired from the European Union. Such bad treatment."
Video: Austria, Germany open borders to asylum seekers (ABC News)

Warning: This story contains an image that may distress some readers.
In Budapest, almost emptied of asylum seekers the night before, the main railway station was again filling up with new arrivals, a seemingly unrelenting human surge northwards through the Balkan peninsula from Turkey and Greece.
But with trains to western Europe cancelled, hundreds set off by foot, saying they would walk to the Austrian border, 170 kilometres away, like others had tried on Friday.
Hungary said they would no longer provide buses to take them to the border. By contrast, Austrian state railway company OeBB said it had added 4,600 seats for migrants by extending trains and laying on special, non-scheduled services.
Austria said it had agreed with Germany that it would allow the migrants access, waiving asylum rules that require them to register in the first EU state they reach.
Photo: Austrian policemen were required to help children and mothers board their train in Nickelsdorf, Austria. (AFP: Joe Klamar)
Hungary to deploy troops, defend southern border

Hungary, the main entry point into Europe's borderless Schengen zone for migrants, has taken a hard line, vowing to seal its southern border.
The country is building a 3.5-metre-high fence along its border with Serbia, and on Friday its parliament adopted measures the government said would effectively seal the southern frontier to asylum seekers as of September 15.
On Saturday, prime minister Viktor Orban said Hungary would also deploy police forces.
"It's not 150,000 [asylum seekers coming] that some [in the EU] want to divide according to quotas, it's not 500,000, a figure that I heard in Brussels, it's millions, then tens of millions, because the supply of immigrants is endless," he said.
YouTube: Church leaders welcome arrivals in Munich

Hungary said it had recorded 165,000 asylum seekers entering so far this year. In total, about 350,000 refugees and migrants have reached the border of the EU this year, leaving the 28-nation group arguing over burden-sharing.
At an EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg, the group failed to agree on any practical steps out of the crisis.
"Given the challenges facing our German friends as well, all of Europe needs to wake up. [The time for] reverie is over," Austrian interior minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said.
"Now the continent of Europe is challenged. In this great challenge the entire continent has to give a unified answer."
British finance minister George Osborne said Europe and Britain must offer asylum to those genuinely fleeing persecution but also boost aid, defeat people-smuggling gangs and tackle the conflict in Syria to ease the crisis.
The influx is expected to cost Germany around 10 billion euros ($16 billion) this year, but chancellor Angela Merkel insisted Berlin could still balance it budget while fulfilling its "duty" to offer asylum to refugees.
Photo: Asylum seekers arrive at the Austrian-Hungarian border station of Hegyeshalom (Reuters: Laszlo Balogh)
Boy's body catches world's attention

Pressure to take effective action rose sharply after pictures flashed around the world of the body of a three-year-old Syrian Kurdish boy washed up on a Turkish resort beach, personalising the collective tragedy of the asylum seekers.
Aylan Kurdi drowned along with his mother and brother while trying to cross by boat on a tiny rubber dinghy to a Greek island.
Then on Saturday, a newborn boy was found dead after his migrant parents reached the shores of a Greek island in a boat from Turkey.
The baby boy was taken from the island of Agathonisi to a hospital on the nearby island of Samos, where he was pronounced dead, the Greek coastguard service said.
Photo: Refugees and migrants wait for a registration procedure at the port of Mytilene on the Greek island of Lesbos. (Reuters: Dimitris Michalakis)
Greece is struggling to cope with a wave of migrants and refugees from the war in Syria making the short crossing from Turkey to its eastern islands, including Kos, Lesbos, Samos and Agathonisi.
Thousands are waiting to be identified and ferried to Athens to continue their trip to other European countries.
A Greek ferry unloaded 2,500 migrants at the port of Piraeus on Saturday, bringing the total number of people moved to the country's mainland since last Monday to 13,373, the coastguard said.
In a sign of how difficult the situation has become, scuffles broke out for the second day on Lesbos in a row between police and about 3,000 asylum seekers protesting about lengthy identification procedures.
A record 50,000 people hit Greek shores in July alone and were ferried from islands unable to cope to the mainland by a government already floundering in financial crisis and keen to dispatch them promptly north into Macedonia, where they enter Serbia and then Hungary.
Reuters

Asylum seekers arrive in Germany after bus, train journey through Hungary and Austria - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

First refugees arrive from Hungary after Austria and Germany open borders

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Efstathiadis) — Sun, 06 Sep 2015 05:22:00 +0000

Emma Graham-Harrison in Budapest, Patrick Kingsley, Kevin Rawlinson, Warren Murray and agencies Saturday 5 September 2015

People disembark at reception stations inside Austria after Hungary provides buses for those camped in Budapest and others who had already set out

Video Thousands of refugees cross into Austria from Hungary

Refugees welcomed warmly in Germany

Hundreds of refugees march from Budapest towards Austria

Refugees rush to board trains at Budapest Keleti station

Refugees arrive in Germany by train

The first of thousands of refugees reached Austria early on Saturday morning after busloads left Hungary in a sudden exodus when the Austrian and German governments agreed to receive them.
About 1,200 people had set off westwards through Hungary early on Friday evening, on foot and in cars, while many more remained at Budapest’s Keleti railway terminus. But then Hungarian authorities announced they would provide buses to take the refugees to the Austrian border and a rapid embarkation began in Budapest, where many were camped at Keleti railway station.
Video: Refugees in the Austrian border town of Nickelsdorf line up to board trains headed for Vienna on Saturday morning

By 3am local time news channels and social media were showing people being met by Austrian authorities at Nickelsdorf as the first buses arrived. There were scenes of hot drinks being handed out in cups from an outdoor kitchen to passengers from the buses, while other footage showed police explaining what would happen next. Later they were ushered into shelters where more food and stretcher beds awaited.
Austrian police said on Saturday that about 4,000 people had arrived at the border, with many more likely to follow during the day. Trains were running every 30 minutes to take people from the border town of Nickelsdorf to Vienna as well as a fleet of buses.
In Hungary on Friday there had been initial confusion, then suspicion at where they were being taken, but most of the refugees eventually boarded the buses. Many smiled, bidding goodbye to Hungarian volunteers who had brought food and water in recent days. Several thousand people had been left camped in front of the central railway station after authorities cancelled all trains heading to Austria and Germany.
Faymann, the Austrian chancellor, confirmed on Friday that Austria and Germany would allow them in. “Because of today’s emergency situation on the Hungarian border, Austria and Germany agree in this case to a continuation of the refugees’ journey into their countries.”
Video: Hundreds of migrants board buses provided by Hungary’s government in Budapest early on Saturday, as Austria said it and Germany would let them in

He added that Hungary was still expected to meet its obligations to accept the return of people who had sought asylum there before crossing into another country. But he indicated Austria’s willingness to take a greater share of the burden of accommodating the refugees.
The Austrian Red Cross said it expected between 800 and 1,500 refugees to arrive at a reception centre at the country’s border with Hungary in the early hours of Saturday.
“We are getting beds, shelter, food and hot drinks ready for them, and there will also be medical care available if needed,” said spokesman Thomas Horvath.
On board one of the buses to Austria, exhausted migrants veered between concern and relief. Many were nervous after Hungary tried to transport a trainload of migrants heading for Austria into a camp on Thursday.
“I was not comfortable leaving the Keleti railway station,” said 26-year-old Syrian Mohammed. But he relaxed as he caught a glimpse of the Danube river through the window: “I had heard about it but I’ve never seen it,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”

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Between 800 and 3,000 migrants were expected to arrive at the Austrian border in the pre-dawn hours, said police spokesman Werner Fasching, adding that law enforcement and workers from the Red Cross were there to receive them.
Some 600 beds had been made available in Nickelsdorf for the new arrivals and neighbouring regions were mobilising to ensure they were provided with food and medical care, he said.
In Hungary, at one point along the road, a group of stragglers waited in the drizzle for a bus after falling behind the main pack of people who had set off on foot. “Some of them were vomiting,” says Kolozs, a 39-year-old Hungarian engineer who tied a blanket between a tree and a car to shelter the refugees. “They are women and children – I’m amazed they got this far.”
Some people cruised past in cars shouting abuse, calling them “Saddam Hussein” and “scum”. The Syrians were restrained in response. “People are people,” said Manoli, a 19-year-old electrical engineering student. “You can’t convince some of them.” Some of the Syrians remained to be convinced whether the promised bus would really take them to Austria. “Who’s organising it, the Hungarians?” asks one Syrian. “Forget it, I’m walking.”

People arriving from Hungary are given food at a reception point in Nickelsdorf, Burgenland, Austria. Photograph: Herbert P Oczeret/EPA
Meanwhile as the Keleti camp in Budapest rapidly emptied out, the handful still remaining kept asking: “Is it a trick?”
“They say they take us to Austria, but won’t they just take us to a camp like they did with the train?” said Hadi Rostani, a 24-year-old from Afghanistan’s south-west. Several of his friends had thought they were getting a train to Germany, only for it to be stopped near a refugee camp that Hungarian authorities tried to corral passengers without papers into.
Others did not need to be asked twice. “I feel like a baby that has been given a new toy,” said Akhmad Alfarhan, a 23-year-old from Damascus travelling with a group of friends just before his bus set off.
“I will learn German and then I can go back to college and finish training as a dentist,” said 20-year-old Sara Mardini, grinning widely. “I thought it was a joke when they woke me up to tell me there were buses.”
As the buses slipped away into the dark drizzle of Saturday morning many inside smiled and waved at everyone outside despite the strange hour. Their goodbye party was a mix of volunteers, aid workers, riot police and a few bemused tourists and football hooligans who had drifted down from a match at a nearby stadium.
“Thank you! Thank you!” they shouted as the fast-emptying square slipped behind them. Most of the crowd had been asleep when news spread that the march of hundreds to the border had forced the Hungarian government’s hand.
Video: On Friday thousands of refugees began walking to Vienna from Budapest

None complained about the abrupt nature of their departure, or the rickety old city buses that had been pressed into service for the long commute. Most had spent days camping out in miserable limbo on the station forecourt, subsisting on handouts, afraid of death on the roads after more than 70 people suffocated in a smuggler’s van, but barred from crossing the border on trains.
The Hungarian government seemed relieved to see them go. Before the first bus even pulled out, clean-up teams began disinfecting and removing the eight squalid portable toilets that hundreds of travellers had been forced to share.
By the time the first of them reached Austria the square in Budapest was nearly empty, dotted only with tents, sleeping mats and other detritus left behind by families who feared they could not carry them, or hoped they would no longer need them.

People arrive on foot at the Austria-Hungary border. Photograph: Heinz-Peter Bader/Reuters
Earlier, Angela Merkel said Germany could cope with a record-breaking influx of people this year without raising taxes. But the German chancellor repeated her call that the refugees should be distributed more equally across the EU member states, as part of a common strategy to cope with Europe’s unprecedented migration crisis.
“The whole system needs to be redesigned,” said Merkel, adding that tasks and burdens should be distributed more fairly.
The country is the EU’s biggest recipient of refugees from the Middle East and economic migrants from south-eastern Europe.
A record 104,460 asylum seekers entered the country in August, and the country expects about 800,000 refugees and migrants this year – four times last year’s level.
In light of the influx, the government plans to introduce a supplementary budget to free up funds for the refugees and to help towns in the frontline which are already struggling to pay for accommodation and fund medical care for the new arrivals.
“We won’t raise taxes. And we still have the goal of posting a balanced budget without taking on new debt,” Merkel told several local newspapers.
The leeway in the country’s budget that will allow it to spend an extra €5bn (£3.68bn) was created by higher than expected tax revenues and windfall gains from the sale of mobile phone frequencies, officials said.
Merkel’s coalition is expected to agree on a series of measures on Sunday, including cutting red tape to facilitate the construction of new asylum shelters, speeding up asylum procedures and increasing funds for federal states and towns.
In Hungary a government spokesman, Zoltan Kovacs, said Hungary would continue to abide by European Union rules, which includes an obligation to register all asylum seekers at the first EU point of entry. Hundreds continued to flow through Hungary’s southern border with non-EU member Serbia daily, and tens of thousands of more were travelling through Greece and the Balkans.
Video: Thousands of refugees in Hungary spent the night at Keleti station on Thursday

“The situation at Keleti train station, on the highways and on the train lines threatened to shut down part of Hungary’s transportation system, which led to the decision to take the migrants to the Hungarian side of the border,” Kovacs said.
On Friday the Hungarian parliament voted to tighten its immigration rules, approving the creation of so-called “transit zone” facilities on the Hungarian border with Serbia where migrants would be kept until their asylum requests were decided within eight days. Migrants would have limited rights to appeal those decisions.
In Geneva the UN refugee agency said on Friday that nearly 5,600 people crossed from Greece to Macedonia a day earlier, roughly double the already high 2,500 to 3,000 per day in recent weeks.
Antonio Guterres, the head of the UN refugee agency, urged the EU to create a “mass relocation program … with the mandatory participation of all EU member states”. He said a “very preliminary estimate” would be for the creation of at least 200,000 places to be added across the bloc. EU leaders are mulling plans to create 120,000 more spaces beyond the 32,000 already agreed.

First refugees arrive from Hungary after Austria and Germany open borders | World news | The Guardian

European migrant crisis: Asylum seekers arrive in Austria after being bussed to border by Hungary

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Efstathiadis) — Sat, 05 Sep 2015 09:29:00 +0000

Photo: Asylum seekers arrive at the Austrian-Hungarian border station of Hegyeshalom (Reuters: Laszlo Balogh)
Related Story: Buses take asylum seekers to Austria as crackdown crumbles
Related Story: 'I've paid highest price': Father of drowned Syrian boy buries family
Map: Hungary
Thousands of exhausted asylum seekers have streamed into Austria after being bussed to the border by the Hungarian government, which gave up trying to hold them back after days of confrontation and chaos.
Hungary's right-wing government deployed dozens of buses to move asylum seekers from the capital Budapest, and pick up over 1,000 others who were walking down the main highway to Vienna.
Austria said it had agreed with Germany that they would allow the people access, unable to enforce the rules of a European asylum system brought to breaking point by the continent's worst refugee crisis since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.
Key points:

Hungary, overwhelmed, opts to bus migrants on to Austria
Over 1,000 people had set out on foot
Father buries Syrian toddler whose death shocked the world
Pressure remains on world leaders to respond to asylum seeker crisis

Wrapped in blankets against the rain, hundreds of visibly tired asylum seekers, many carrying small children, climbed off buses on the Hungarian side of the border and walked in a long line into Austria, receiving fruit and water from aid workers.
Some waiting Austrians held signs that read: "Refugees welcome."
"We're happy. We'll go to Germany," said a Syrian man who gave his name as Mohammed.
Austrian police said around 4,000 refugees had arrived since the early morning hours, with many more to come.
"At times the rain has been really heavy, now it's drizzling a bit. The people are all soaked," Hans Peter Doskozil, chief of police in Burgenland state, told the Austria Press Agency.
A special half-hourly train service is running to take people from the border to Vienna, on top of 20 buses shuttling back and forth between the Austrian capital and the border with Hungary.
Hungary cited traffic safety for its decision to move the asylum seekers on. But it appeared to mark an admission that the government had lost control in the face of overwhelming numbers determined to reach the richer nations of northern and western Europe at the end of an often perilous journey from war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
On Friday, hundreds broke out of an overcrowded camp on Hungary's border with Serbia; others escaped from a stranded train, sprinting away from riot police down railway tracks, while still more took to the highway by foot led by a one-legged Syrian refugee and chanting "Germany, Germany!"
The scenes were emblematic of a crisis that has left Europe groping for answers, and for unity.
Photo: Asylum seekers arrive at the Austrian-Hungarian border station of Hegyeshalom (Reuters: Heinz-Peter Bader)
By nightfall, the Keleti railway terminus in Budapest, for days a campsite of migrants barred from taking trains west to Austria and Germany, was almost empty, as smiling families boarded a huge queue of buses that then snaked out of the capital.
The migrants left shoes, clothes and mattresses scattered behind them. Helicopters circled overhead.
"Because of today's emergency situation on the Hungarian border, Austria and Germany agree in this case to a continuation of the refugees' journey into their countries," Austrian chancellor Werner Faymann said on his Facebook page.
Even as the buses arrived to collect them, some people remained suspicious, mindful of how hundreds of their number had boarded a train on Thursday that they believed was heading to the border but was stopped just west of Budapest by riot police who ordered them into a reception camp.
Ahmed, from Afghanistan, said of the buses to the border: "If it is true, it is victory. Maybe we can find a way now."
For days, Hungary has cancelled all trains going west to Austria and Germany, saying it is obliged under EU rules to register all asylum seekers, who should remain there until their requests are processed. Many have refused and several thousand had camped outside the Budapest train station.
On Friday, a crowd that swelled to over 1,000 broke away, streaming through the capital, over a bridge and out onto the main highway from Budapest to Vienna, escorted by police struggling to keep the road open. Some clutched pictures of German chancellor Angela Merkel.
Others, in Bicske to the west of Budapest, sprinted down railway tracks, escaping a packed train held back by police for two days, while in the south they broke down barriers and wrestled with helmeted riot officers at an overcrowded border camp near Serbia.
Hungary migrant trek a 'wake up call'

Austrian foreign minister Sebastian Kurz the plight of thousands of asylum seekers stranded in Hungary, now being taken into his country, was a "wake up call" for Europe.
"This has to be an eye opener how messed up the situation in Europe is now," Mr Kurz said as he arrived for informal talks with his EU peers dominated by the deepening asylum crisis.
"I hope that this serves as a wake up call that [the situation] cannot continue."
The 28-nation EU is sharply divided over what to do with the flood of migrants fleeing war and turmoil across the Middle East and North Africa.
Photo: Asylum seekers are escorted to buses by police near the reception centre in Roszke. (Reuters: Marko Djurica)
Under-fire British prime minister David Cameron, accused of not doing enough to share the burden, said he would set out plans next week to take "thousands more" refugees.
Germany has led efforts to open the doors, saying it would accept 800,000 refugees this year and backing plans for mandatory quotas in the EU.
Hungary, along with many of the bloc's newer eastern members, flatly opposes quotas and insists current rules should be applied whereby asylum seekers must be processed in the country they first arrive in, not the country they want to go to.
In this case, most of the refugees are Syrians arriving via Greece which has been overwhelmed by the numbers.
Hungarian foreign minister Peter Szijjarto said the problems in Hungary had been caused by "the failed migration policy of the EU and ... irresponsible statements made by some European politicians".
Mr Szijjarto did not elaborate but Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban bluntly blamed Germany earlier this week for encouraging people to risk their lives coming to Europe with its promise of more places for refugees.

European migrant crisis: Asylum seekers arrive in Austria after being bussed to border by Hungary - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

European migrant crisis: Buses take asylum seekers to Austria after hundreds begin walk from Budapest, others break out of border camp

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Efstathiadis) — Sat, 05 Sep 2015 09:21:00 +0000

Photo: Austria says it will grant entry to buses from Hungary that are filled with asylum seekers. (Reuters: Leonhard Foeger)
Related Story: Britain to accept thousands more Syrian asylum seekers as UN calls for EU to increase intake
Related Story: 'I've paid highest price': Father of drowned Syrian boy buries family
Map: Hungary
Long lines of buses have left Budapest packed with asylum seekers bound for Austria, which said it had agreed with Germany to let them in as Hungary gave in to crowds that had set out on foot for western Europe.
Key points

Hungary, overwhelmed, opts to bus asylum seekers to Austria
More than 1,000 people had set out on foot
Hundreds break out of border camp, escape train
Austria, Germany agree to allow asylum seekers entry
Father buries Syrian boy whose death shocked the world

Hungary's right-wing government said around 100 buses would pick up thousands of migrants camped in front of Budapest's main railway terminus and another 1,200 striding down the main highway to Vienna.
Austria said they would be granted entry, regardless of European Union rules. Smiling asylum seekers boarded the buses, waving goodbye to Hungarian volunteers and aid workers.
"Because of today's emergency situation on the Hungarian border, Austria and Germany agree in this case to a continuation of the refugees' journey into their countries," Austrian chancellor Werner Faymann said on his Facebook page.
The Hungarian government cited safety concerns for the decision to lay on buses, after days of cancelled trains and confrontation with riot police refusing to let the asylum seekers pass.
But it appeared to mark an admission that the government had lost control in the face of overwhelming numbers of people determined to reach western Europe having fled war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Photo: Around 1,000 were estimated to have started walking from Budapest to the Austrian border. (Reuters: Laszlo Balogh)
For days, Hungary has cancelled all trains going west to Austria and Germany, saying it is obliged under EU rules to register all asylum seekers, who should remain there until their requests are processed.
Many have refused, determined to get to the richer and more generous countries of northern and western Europe, mainly Germany.
Several thousand have been camped outside the Budapest train station, but on Friday a crowd that swelled to more 1,000 broke away, streaming through the capital, over a bridge and out onto the main highway from Budapest to Vienna, escorted by police struggling to keep the road open.
Clutching pictures of German chancellor Angela Merkel, they broke through a police barricade.
YouTube: 'We walk to Germany'

Others, in Bicske to the west of Budapest, sprinted down railway tracks, escaping a packed train held back by police for two days, while in the south they broke down barriers and wrestled with helmeted riot officers at an overcrowded border camp near Serbia.
The turmoil contrasted with a pledge by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban to get to grips with Europe's worst humanitarian crisis since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.
The Hungarian parliament on Friday tightened laws that Mr Orban's government said would effectively seal Hungary's southern border to migrants as of September 15.
Mr Orban hailed "a different era", but Friday brought more desperate scenes in a crisis that has left Europe groping for unity.
A Pakistani man died, police said. State television said he had stumbled and hit his head as he ran down train tracks.
Asylum seekers clash with police in riot gear

Photo: Riot police stand guard in front of a migrant reception centre in Roszke where 2,300 migrants are threatening to break out. (Reuters: Stringer Shanghai)
Hungary has emerged as the main entry point for asylum seekers reaching the EU by land across the Balkan peninsula.
Mr Orban, one of Europe's most outspoken critics of mass immigration, took to the airwaves to issue caustic warnings that Europeans could become a minority on their own continent.
But his government's plans for a crackdown appeared to be breaking down in the face of such large numbers headed for Germany, which had said Syrian refugees could register there regardless of where they enter the EU, contrary to EU rules.
More than 140,000 people have been recorded entering Hungary so far this year through the EU's external border with Serbia, where Mr Orban's government is building a 3.5-metre-high wall. Countless others may have entered without registering.
On the border, police gave chase and halted traffic on a nearby motorway after 300 people fled a crowded reception centre in Roszke near Serbia.
They were eventually caught, police said, but hundreds broke out again despite a ring of hundreds of officers in full riot gear, clutching shields. Some were taken away by bus.
In Bicske, a two-day standoff ended after 300 asylum seekers managed to escape from a train held up by police demanding they disembark and go to a nearby reception centre. The remainder went voluntarily.
"No camp. No Hungary. Freedom train," someone had written with shaving foam on the side of the train.
Photo: Asylum seekers are escorted to buses by police near the reception centre in Roszke. (Reuters: Marko Djurica)
Father buries boy whose drowning shocked the world

On Friday, Hungarian lawmakers adopted some of a raft of measures creating "transit zones" on the border, where asylum seekers would be held until their requests are processed and deported if denied.
The measures introduce jail terms for those who cross the border without permission or damage the fence, and may eventually provide for the use of the army.
Budapest's hard line has produced scenes of chaos and desperation this week, symbolic of the discord and recriminations within a divided Europe over how to respond.
Photo: Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi is buried in Kobane. (AFP)
The human cost was underlined as the father of Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi, whose drowning on the crossing to Europe shocked the world, buried his family in their war-torn hometown.
Symbolising the human tragedy at the heart of the crisis, Aylan's father Abdullah Kurdi returned Friday to the Syrian border town of Kobane to lay his son to rest along with Aylan's brother and mother, who also died.
"I will have to pay the price for this the rest of my life," the devastated father told mourners, after personally carrying his sons' bodies to Kobane's Martyrs' Cemetery, where around 100 people attended the ceremony.
The family were driven out of Kobane in June after fierce fighting between Kurdish militants and Islamic State militants.
Pressure on European leaders to act

There was a global outrage after photos showed the little boy's body lying in the surf of a Turkish resort, washed up after the boat taking the family to Greece sank.
Angry protesters booed European Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans and EU home affairs commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos when they visited the Greek island of Kos.
EU foreign ministers met in Luxembourg to discuss the crisis ahead of a state of the union address next week by European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker when he will lay out new measures which could well exacerbate EU differences.
Photo: Hungary's prime minister Viktor Orban said Budapest was defending Europe's Schengen zone from a huge influx of migrants. (AFP: Thierry Charlier)
Mr Juncker has proposed mandatory quotas for resettling 160,000 refugees, after an earlier plan for 40,000 met stiff opposition, notably from Hungary, and attracted offers of places for only 32,000.
Germany and France back quotas, but Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia together rejected any quota systems.
Under-fire British prime minister David Cameron, accused of not doing enough to share the burden, said he would set out plans next week to take "thousands more" refugees.
However, he insisted they would be refugees from camps on the border with Syria and not those already in other EU member states. To do that would just encourage more people to make the perilous journey to Europe, he said.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres has warned the EU faced a "defining moment" and called for the mandatory resettlement of 200,000 refugees by EU states.
ABC/wires

Gallery: Asylum seeker crisis in Europe (Warning: Graphic content)

More on this story:

Abbott defends border policies amid New York Times criticism
Europe's asylum seeker crisis: How you can help
'Let this be the last': Drowned toddler's father calls for action
Leaders react to images of drowned toddler on Turkish beach
Asylum seekers in Hungary pulled off train, throw themselves on tracks
Hundreds of asylum seekers storm Budapest train station

From other news sites:

The Sydney Morning Herald: Refugee crisis: Migrants lie on railway tracks in Hungary
News.com.au: Mother, baby on track in Hungary amid migrant chaos
The Independent (UK): Refugee crisis: Hundreds of volunteers join convoy to take asylum seekers from Hungary to Austria as train stalemate continues
Globe and Mail (Canada): Migrants break out of camp as Hungary loses grip
BBC: Migrant crisis: What solutions can the EU find?

European migrant crisis: Buses take asylum seekers to Austria after hundreds begin walk from Budapest, others break out of border camp - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Hungarian police and refugees in standoff after train returns to camp

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Efstathiadis) — Fri, 04 Sep 2015 04:26:00 +0000

Dan Nolan in Bicske, Emma Graham-Harrison in Budapest and agencies

Friday 4 September 2015

Hundreds refuse to leave train at Bicske station, with many declining food and water and vowing to go on hunger strike if they are not taken to Germany

Young refugees at Budapest railway terminus, Thursday. Their families were mainly hoping to go on to Germany. Photograph: Beata Zawrzel/Demotix/Corbis
Hundreds of people remained on a train in the Hungarian town of Bicske on Thursday night following a botched attempt by authorities to move on some of the thousands gathered in Budapest’s main railway station.
The Hungarian authorities earlier appeared to trick hundreds of people into taking a train to a refugee camp outside Budapest in an attempt to end a two-day standoff at the station where thousands have been trying to get to western Europe.
There was confusion at Keleti rail terminus in the morning when departures were initially cancelled and then passengers piled on to a newly arrived train they hoped would take them to Austria or Germany.
Instead, the train stopped in the town of Bicske, outside the capital, where riot police were waiting to take the refugees to an overcrowded facility that many had left a few days earlier in the hope of finding sanctuary in Germany.

Hungarian police order refugees off train heading to Austrian border

Train was first to leave Budapest since police blockade ended amid fears among migrants and refugees that they will be taken to Bicske camp
Read more

There were chaotic scenes at the station when one man pulled his wife and child on to the tracks, begging police not to force them to go to the camp. “We won’t move from here,” he shouted repeatedly. The man was later handcuffed and taken away by officers.
A large group of people was surrounded in a hot and cramped underpass leading out of the station, chanting “no camp, no camp”. Other passengers clashed with police and forced their way back on to the train to begin a standoff in the sweltering heat. Police brought water but many of the migrants refused to take the bottles, vowing to go on hunger strike.
Later, volunteers tried to offer them food but people refused to eat. “We don’t need food and water. Just let us go to Germany,” one said from an open train window.
Hungarian police declared the area an “operation zone” and removed reporters from the station. Later, reporters were allowed to gather on a platform. About 100 people were on the opposite platform and about 50 riot police blocked the route across the tracks.
The travellers on the train resorted to holding signs up against the train windows, which said “no camp for children” and “save our souls, we are children”.
Police told the right-wing HirTV channel that they were waiting for the press to leave before taking the migrants to the camp at Bicske. The refugees chanted “media, media, don’t leave!” and held anti-Hungarian government slogans against the train windows. One of them said: “It is better to die in Syria than in Hungary.”
About 500 people remained on the train on Thursday night, after just 30 agreed to go to the camp to be registered.
Euronews reported that a second train had stopped near the north-western town of Győr in Hungary and several dozen people had been escorted off by police.

Hungarian police stop a train with refugees in Bicske. Photograph: Björn Kietzmann/Demotix/Corbis
Two miles from the train in Bicske, a staff member at the refugee camp disclosed that they had been prepared for the manoeuvre, saying she had been told to get to work early in expectation of a sudden influx of migrants.
Outside the camp gates, a young Hungarian mother of three children, from Tatabanya, said she had diverted her trip after hearing the news on the radio. “I had been planning to go to Keleti station to drop off some clothes,” she said, “but then I heard that the migrants were being taken here [and] decided to make a detour.” Conditions at the camp, where many refugees are sleeping in tents, are said to be among the worst in Hungary.
“Why does Hungary keep us here when they don’t have the money to look after us,” asked a 30-year-old Iranian man. “Here we get 6,000 forints a week to live from, we never get an evening meal, and often we don’t have water. I have been here for five months, and I have never had any medical help for this,” he said, knocking on his prosthetic leg.
In Budapest, police had hoped to entice many more of the estimated 3,000 people camping outside Keleti to leave on Thursday. Conditions at the terminal have become increasingly desperate despite the presence of volunteers distributing water, food, medicine and disinfectants.
The Associated Press reported seeing a toddler beside his sleeping parents crawling on to the pavement to eat breadcrumbs. Nearby, an unattended child rummaged through a pile of rubbish. Hundreds of people took turns washing their hair, clothes and feet and brushing their teeth at a five-tap water supply (with no sewerage system) that was supposed to provide drinking water for the entire camp.
The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, in Brussels for crisis talks, defended the heavy-handed tactics, adding that other politicians should not criticise Hungary for doing “what was compulsory” under EU regulations.
But Hungarian citizens showed their disapproval of the way the refugees were treated. In Budapest, several people went to the station to help. “I am just really ashamed about the government, that they don’t help these people at all,” said Barbara Baranyai, 31, who had made a collection of baby clothes, shoes, fruit, biscuits and blankets in her neighbourhood and travelled about 20 miles to the station.
“Due to the hate-generating speech of the Hungarian government, they have turned people against these refugees,” said Baranyai, who was distributing her goods with her own 15-month-old son strapped to her back. “I see other countries handling it much better. If I imagine I had to go with my child, crossing seas and walking, then staying like this, living at the station so long, the thought is unbearable.” She broke down in tears.

Hungarian police and refugees in standoff after train returns to camp | World news | The Guardian

Europe migrant crisis: Tensions rise at Budapest train station as asylum seeker numbers swell

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Efstathiadis) — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 01:28:00 +0000

Photo: Asylum seeker protests continue for the second day outside the Keleti railway station in Budapest. (AFP: Attila Kisbenedek)
Related Story: Eurostar passengers stranded in dark after asylum seekers enter train tracks
Map: Hungary
Tensions in Hungary between asylum seekers and police have remained high for the second day as hundreds of mainly young men faced off against police blocking their path into Budapest's main international train station.
As the number of asylum seekers prevented from taking trains to Austria and Germany swelled to over 2,000 at the Keleti station, according to volunteers, crowds chanted "No police! No police!" and "Germany! Germany!"
Late Wednesday, the protesters, angry at reports of police removing asylum seekers from the station to registration centres for fingerprinting, ran up to a police line and began shouting, some throwing plastic bottles.

It is impossible that people in these numbers, tens of thousands of people, keep on going to the heart of Europe without any kind of discipline.
Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs

Traffic was blocked for around 15 minutes.
The officers were quickly reinforced by riot police who donned helmets and pushed the protesters back to stop them blocking the road.
No one appeared to have been hurt.
The standoff was the latest and largest in a number of tense encounters throughout Wednesday that followed Hungary's decision a day earlier to prevent asylum seekers getting on trains.
On Monday, several thousand asylum seekers had crammed onto trains bound for Austria and Germany.
The government explained the U-turn by saying it was applying EU law after confusion caused by an easing of Germany's asylum regulations.
Hungary defends treatment of asylum seekers

Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs defended his country's treatment of the asylum seekers.
"There is only one way to resolve this and this is by law, and re-establishing law and order," he told ABC's The World program.
"Not only at the railway station, but also at the borders of the European Union.
"These people we are facing and seeing at the railway station shouldn't be there.
Video: Hungarian government spokesperson Zoltan Kovacs discusses the situation in Budapest. (The World)

"We have 2-to-3,000 illegal migrants arriving to Hungary daily, and obviously they have one thing in mind — to reach Western Europe."
There were outbreaks of fighting between asylum seekers on Wednesday, while a group of far-right skinheads arrived to taunt the crowds but ran off after one received a blow to the head.
Earlier, tempers rose when the police suddenly moved to clear a pathway in the 'transit zone', a makeshift underground refugee camp where thousands of asylum seekers were sitting or lying on the ground on blankets in cramped conditions, looked after only by Hungarian volunteers.
"My friends got on a train on Monday? Why the hell don't they let me go too, all of us?" said Ohlit, a furious 41-year-old Syrian protestor.
As well as the crowds at Keleti, several hundred have been camping out at another station, Nyugati, and in nearby John Paul II square.
Early Wednesday, police closed down part of a suburban train station in Budapest, and surrounded 100 asylum seekers travelling from the southern border who refused to board a connecting train to a refugee camp in Debrecen.
Chanting, "Germany! Germany!" and "Freedom!" the group held a sit-down protest.
Mr Kovacs said Hungary was struggling with the sheer number of people arriving.
"They have no identification ... they don't comply with the rules and don't go to the shelters we are providing them ... they want to be in Europe as soon as possible," he said.
"These people aren't coming through the official border crossing points in any country.
"It is impossible that people in these numbers, tens of thousands of people, keep on going to the heart of Europe without any kind of discipline."
Hungary joins Italy and Greece at the frontlines

Hungary has in recent months joined Italy and Greece as a "frontline" state in Europe's migrant crisis, with 50,000 people trekking up the western Balkans and entering the country in August alone.
The government of right-wing prime minister Viktor Orban — who was due for talks in Brussels on Thursday has responded by erecting a controversial razor-wire barrier along its 175-kilometre border with Serbia.
Asylum seeker crisis in pictures

See images from Europe as it faces what International Organisation for Migration figures reveal is the biggest migrant crisis for the continent since World War II.

In addition, it is building a four-metre-high fence and on Thursday parliament was due to begin debating a series of new laws to deal with the influx, including greater police powers and using the army at the border.
However Hungary's razor-wire barrier is proving ineffective in keeping out the tens of thousands of people trekking up from Greece through the western Balkans, with Hungarian authorities saying that 2,284 crossed on Tuesday including 353 children.
"Normal people, abnormal people, educated, uneducated, doctors, engineers, any people, we're staying here. Until we go by train to Germany," said Mohamed, a Syrian protesting at the station.
Bilal, a fellow Syrian from the divided city of Aleppo, said there was an urgency to get into Europe.
"We fear that one day everything will change, that even Germany will close the border when it has had enough. So we must make our journey extremely fast," he said on Tuesday near Serbia's border with Hungary.
AFP

From other news sites:

Fox News: Migrants protest in Budapest as Hungary blocks westbound travel for second day
Los Angeles Times: Chaos at Hungarian train station as migrant crisis in Europe deepens
Reuters: Migrant chaos at Budapest train station; Germany says EU rules still hold
SBS: Hundreds of asylum seekers stranded at Hungary station
CNN: Migrants protest at Hungary train station as entry is barred

Europe migrant crisis: Tensions rise at Budapest train station as asylum seeker numbers swell - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Greece’s Ex-Finance Minister Tells All - The New Yorker

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Efstathiadis) — Wed, 02 Sep 2015 22:44:00 +0000

How a radical finance minister took on Europe—and failed.

By Ian Parker

Yanis Varoufakis said, “There are times when you say, ‘I’m not going to sign something I disagree with. And stuff the consequences!’ ” Credit Photograph by Davide Monteleone / VII

On July 4th, the night before a referendum asked the Greek people to decide how far their debt-ridden government should accommodate the demands of its main creditors—the “troika” of the European Union, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund—Yanis Varoufakis, the country’s minister of finance, sat outdoors at an Athens restaurant, wearing a T-shirt with an outline of Texas on the front. In January, Varoufakis, an economist who had been teaching at the University of Texas at Austin, abruptly entered Greek politics, becoming the public face of the country’s defiant negotiations with European leaders. After months of fatigue, he had slept for much of the day, and he was in a good mood. Varoufakis, who is fifty-four, had the peace of mind of someone who was certain of an election result and already savoring the satisfactions to follow. His government, the left-wing Syriza party, would lose. The people would vote “yes”—that is, in favor of making more concessions than Varoufakis and Alexis Tsipras, the country’s forty-year-old Prime Minister and the leader of Syriza, had said that they could stomach. Varoufakis would resign as a minister, and would never again have to endure all-day meetings in Brussels and Luxembourg, listening to other European finance ministers scold Greece for its disobedience. And he would no longer need to marshal scant supplies of discretion to disguise the fact that he and Tsipras had, in recent weeks, lost significant faith in each other. Varoufakis had not given up his hostility toward the troika, or the economic arguments underpinning that hostility, but he spoke as if Syriza’s weeklong campaign of slogans and street protests in support of ohi—“no”—were already archived in Greece’s long history of resistance to external aggressors. A “yes” vote, Varoufakis declared, was “inevitable.”
He was with his wife, Danae Stratou, an artist whose work mainly involves installations and photography, and his friend James Galbraith, an American economist who is a professor at the University of Texas. Galbraith had been acting as an unpaid adviser on an informal international team that included Jeffrey Sachs, an economist at Columbia University. According to Varoufakis, Sachs had been sending “missives for the past two weeks, saying, ‘Demand debt relief. You need it. If it’s not granted, then default.’ ”
It was ten o’clock. Far fewer tourists were about than on a typical July evening, and at the restaurant Greek voices were low. When a passerby took Varoufakis’s hand—the minister preferred a right-angled bro-shake with Greeks—he kept shaking it with an almost violent intensity. It had been a disorienting few days, during which Greeks often described an event or a conversation as having taken place a while ago, before realizing that it had happened only yesterday. Aristides Baltas, a philosopher of science who is currently serving as the minister of education, told me that time had become “dense.”
At the end of the previous week, negotiations between Greece and its troika creditors had stalled, and Tsipras called the referendum. On June 28th, the European Central Bank declined to increase the level of day-to-day credit available, under a program called Emergency Liquidity Assistance, to Greece’s ailing private banks; they were almost out of cash, after months of a slow-motion bank run. Greeks were hoarding euros at home. Varoufakis set in motion what he called “a tragic mechanism” to restrict withdrawals. (The next night, a Monday, he told Stratou, on returning from work, “Honey, I shut the banks.”) Greeks could now withdraw from A.T.M.s no more than sixty euros a day. A shrunken economy shrunk further, although it was still possible to make unlimited electronic transfers within Greece. Determined to empty bank accounts, for fear that deposits would be devalued or lost, Greeks paid their bills: Varoufakis spoke of “huge” sums flowing into the tax office.

The government had made contingency plans for a temporary alternative currency, in the form of electronic I.O.U.s. On June 30th, Greece missed a payment to the I.M.F., joining three other countries in arrears: Somalia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. Three days later, Klaus Regling, the head of the European Stability Mechanism, which was managing the debt that Greece owed to the countries of the E.U., e-mailed Varoufakis to remind him that, because of the missed I.M.F. payment, the European Financial Stability Facility had the option of asking for immediate repayment of E.U. funds. “I personally owe €142.6 billion,” Varoufakis said. “It’s my name on the contract.” He recalled that his response, delivered with war-weary humor, and some contempt, was a two-word quotation of the King of Sparta: “Molon labe,” or “Come and get it.” On the night of July 3rd, Varoufakis was mobbed as he passed through a crowd of tens of thousands of Greeks, to a final rally for the “no” cause. Walking behind him, I saw a man in his seventies kiss Varoufakis’s shoulder.

After months at the center of a global political spectacle, Varoufakis still carried himself as an outsider: informal, ironic, somehow alone on the stage. This demeanor had sometimes given his tenure the air of a five-month-long ted talk. At the restaurant, Varoufakis’s commentary on the recent tumult, and on the likely catastrophic events to come, sometimes seemed amused almost to the point of blitheness. He asked after Galbraith’s children, then noted that, a few hours earlier, a member of Germany’s parliament had visited his apartment, confessing, “I don’t believe in what we’re doing to you.” The legislator was a Christian Democrat—the party led by Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, who had it in her power to ease Greece’s crisis. On departing, the legislator said, “I know you’re an atheist, but I’m going to pray for you.”
Varoufakis made a call. Speaking Greek, he greeted Euclid Tsakalotos, a colleague and friend, as “comrade,” then speculated about Tsipras’s behavior in the event of a “yes” vote: “The wise guys in Maximos”—the Prime Minister’s residence—“have become nicely settled in their seats of power, and they don’t want to leave them.” Varoufakis seemed to be suggesting that Tsipras would not resign after losing the referendum. There would be a “strategic restructuring,” Varoufakis said, and then elections. As for himself, he said, “After tomorrow, I’m going to be riding into the sunset.” He spoke the last four words in English.
A Roma boy came to the table, selling roses. “Varoufakis!” he said, amazed. “I saw you on the news.” Varoufakis allowed himself to be teased for his habit of carrying a backpack, which, he was told, made him look like a schoolboy. He laughed and paid five euros for a rose, which he gave to Stratou. As the boy left, he shouted “Varoufakis! Varoufakis!” at a vender’s volume, and, a few tables away, the minister’s plainclothes security detail—two chic young men who bore a resemblance to George Michael at the time of “Faith”—turned around.
Galbraith told Varoufakis that his instinct was wrong about the referendum results. “No” would prevail, despite the bank closures. Many Greeks had nothing left to lose, and many others had hedged their financial assets, perhaps by buying a car. “Maybe,” Varoufakis said.
Stratou glanced at her phone. “Jamie, you might be right,” she said. She showed Varoufakis her screen. A survey was showing “no” with a lead.
“Don’t underestimate your countrymen—the most utterly fearless group of people,” Galbraith said.
Although a “no” victory would complicate Varoufakis’s immediate political future, he allowed himself to marvel at the Greek electorate’s willingness to accept immediate economic hardship. Syriza had given Greeks no palpable relief since taking power, yet the party’s positions still had popular support. “What the hell is going on?” Varoufakis asked.
The waiter brought a metal jug of wine. Galbraith raised his glass and, freighting an old shared joke with new emotion, quoted Che Guevara: “Hasta la victoria siempre ! ” (“Ever onward to victory!”) Varoufakis laughed.
Greece’s Ministry of Finance occupies a concrete-and-glass mid-rise building overlooking Syntagma Square. Outside the entrance is a protest encampment set up by former ministry cleaners who were laid off two years ago. On nearby streets, cardboard boxes have been pushed against upper-floor windows: office space has become storage space. At ground level, storefront shutters, decorated with political graffiti, stay shut all day, or open only to reveal makeshift outlets for one-euro snow globes and dishcloths.
The minister’s office, on the sixth floor, has a wide view of the square, beyond which stands the Hellenic parliament, a former royal palace. When I met Varoufakis at the ministry, a few days before the referendum, we talked over the sound of Communist trade unionists chanting below: “The people will speak!”
In the fall of 2009, George Papandreou, the leader of pasok, the traditional party of the center-left, became Prime Minister. For years, the state had borrowed recklessly from reckless banks in Greece, Germany, and France. Papandreou’s government announced that the previous administration had published a wildly inaccurate estimate of that year’s likely deficit. Instead of six to eight per cent of gross domestic product, an alarming enough figure, the deficit would be 12.5 per cent. Greece was already known to have severe, long-standing economic weaknesses: tax evasion, corruption, oligarchic habits, a failure to make products that other countries desired. The country’s credit rating plummeted, along with its reputation for statistical candor.

Varoufakis, then a professor with a side career in online punditry, made the case for defaulting with the banks. “I said that we are insolvent, and we have to embrace our insolvency,” he recalled recently. The case against defaulting on banks was reinforced by memories of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, in 2008, and its global consequences. The government raised taxes, froze wages, and cut pensions. The economic argument for austerity—for reducing public spending in difficult times—rests on the idea that investors will be comforted by such displays of discipline. But Greece remained unable to borrow at affordable rates. In April, 2010, Papandreou declared the Greek economy to be “a sinking ship” in need of international aid. Two weeks later, a hundred thousand anti-austerity protesters descended on Syntagma Square. Three people died when a petrol bomb was thrown into a nearby bank.
That May, the troika institutions agreed to lend Greece a hundred and ten billion euros. Germany’s direct contribution was more than twenty billion. That bailout, and a subsequent additional loan of a hundred and thirty billion euros, came with three kinds of obligation: Greece needed to privatize state assets, such as Athens’s port; reform institutions and practices perceived to be inefficient, including its health-care and welfare systems, in ways likely to result in mass dismissals; and adjust its budget through further tax increases and spending cuts, to the point where Greece’s income significantly exceeded its spending on everything but its repayments. In an economy without growth, such a surplus becomes a measure of austerity. The target was 4.5 per cent of the country’s G.D.P.

Criticism of these arrangements, largely shaped by Germany’s demands, is now widespread, and unites Paul Krugman, the economist and Times columnist, Norman Lamont, the Conservative former British Chancellor of the Exchequer, and analysts at the I.M.F. The bailouts turned an unmanageable private debt into an unpayable institutional debt. Although the new loans were largely long-term and low-interest, they carried provisions that intruded on the everyday spending decisions of the state and, in the opinion of many observers, crushed hopes of economic growth. Writing at the time of the first bailout, Varoufakis described it as punitive—a rerun of the Versailles Treaty, this time with Germany as the enactor, rather than the victim, of economic retribution.
In April, 2012, Dimitris Christoulas, a retired pharmacist living on a meagre pension, shot and killed himself beside a cypress tree in Syntagma Square, leaving a note that described the Greek administration as “a Tsolakoglou government”—a reference to the puppet Prime Minister during Greece’s Nazi occupation. Christoulas’s death became a focus of national rage. The cypress tree became brocaded with staples from generations of political flyers.

By last winter, when Greece’s fourth Prime Minister in four years called a snap election, the debt exceeded three hundred billion euros. Measured against G.D.P., Greece had more than double the government debt of Germany or America. If, by then, Greece’s economy was showing modest signs of recovery, few could feel it: youth unemployment had reached sixty per cent. Varoufakis wrote that his country was being subjected by the troika to “a fiscal waterboarding” enabled by supine Greek leaders. He told me that these politicians “never negotiated.” Troika representatives sent orders by e-mail, and the Greeks “just executed them.”
Varoufakis, a mathematical economist with a modest academic reputation, had become a popular writer in Greece. When the snap election was called, he interrupted his professorship at the University of Texas, flew home to Greece, and launched a ten-day election campaign whose sole expense was the cost of gas for his motorcycle. He was running for parliament, with the aim of becoming the finance minister in a Syriza government. The vote was held on January 25th. Syriza doubled its number of seats in parliament, and Tsipras formed a government in coalition with a small right-of-center party that shared its opposition to the troika’s terms. Varoufakis was elected with a larger share of the vote than any other candidate, and he was named the finance minister. His only previous experience of representative office was as the (white, Greek) leader of the Black Students’ Alliance at the University of Essex, a British institution, in the late seventies. Privately, he asked himself, “What have I done?” On his blog, he borrowed some thoughts of defiance—and, by implication, certain failure—from Dylan Thomas. “Greek democracy today chose to stop going gently into the night,” Varoufakis wrote. “Greek democracy resolved to rage against the dying of the light.”
A few years ago, Varoufakis told Yorgos Avgeropoulos, a documentary filmmaker, that the difference between a debt of ten thousand euros and one of three hundred billion euros is that only the latter gives you negotiating power. And it does so only under one condition: “You must be prepared to say no.” Upon his election, Varoufakis used the less than ideal influence available to a rock climber who, roped to his companions, announces a willingness to let go. On behalf of Tsipras’s government, Varoufakis told Greece’s creditors, and the world’s media, that his country objected to the terms of its agreements. This position encouraged widespread commentary about Greece following a heedless path from “no” to default, and from default to a “Grexit” from the euro currency, which might lead to economic catastrophe in Europe and the world.
It was as if Christopher Hitchens had woken up one day as Secretary of State. Varoufakis was no longer writing elegantly prosecutorial blog posts about Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the I.M.F.; he was meeting with Lagarde. Within days of Greece’s election, an academic with Marxist roots, a shaved head, and a strong jaw had become one of the world’s most recognizable politicians. He showed a level of intellectual and rhetorical confidence—or, perhaps, unearned swagger—that lifted Greek hearts and infuriated Northern European politicians. His reluctance to wear a tie seemed to convey the impossibility of containing his manliness.

I first met Varoufakis at the end of April, when his political career had barely begun. He hadn’t yet taken down Instagram photographs of birthday cakes and swimming pools, and when he recalled meeting high-level officials he indulged in the kind of candid, if self-flattering, storytelling that most politicians save for their journals. He teasingly referred to George Osborne, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, as “Georgie.”
Varoufakis was more willing than most elected officials to allow that his career might soon end. It wasn’t clear how long a smiling, steely “no”—even when underwritten by sane economic theory, a popular mandate, and a level of charisma that inspired a member of the Portuguese parliament to proclaim, online, “Damn, the Greek finance minister is sexy”—could serve as the primary international posture of a bankrupt nation hoping to stay in a currency union. Varoufakis was still negotiating for the right to negotiate, while relations between him and Greece’s creditors were publicly souring. It was as if he’d landed in a brisk parable about the illusory power of the Great Man in history. “I don’t care,” he said of his political future. He simply wanted a less punishing deal with creditors, at which point he and Tsipras, by private agreement, would—for one day—wear ties. “But when they say to me, ‘You can keep your job if you sign on this dotted line of a program that is deflationary,’ well, I might as well let the other guys come and do it.”

We were on a Lufthansa flight from Washington to Munich. As we stood in the aisle, Varoufakis told me that he’d had “a very pleasant and quite surprising” ten-minute conversation with President Barack Obama, at a Greek Independence Day celebration in the East Room of the White House. “The setting was appalling,” he said. “All these people were pushing in to talk to him and hug him.” John Stamos, the actor, was at Varoufakis’s right shoulder. “But we probably had a more serious conversation than I would have had in the Oval Office.”
Obama, Varoufakis said, had told him that he didn’t envy him. (In fact, many politicians surely do envy circumstances where there’s so little to lose, professionally, by acting on long-held beliefs in exactly the way demanded of them by a clear-voiced electorate.) Varoufakis told Obama that things were tough: “You inherited a mess when you came to office, but at least you had your central bank behind you. We inherited a mess and we have a central bank”—the European Central Bank—“trying to choke us.”

According to Varoufakis, Obama replied, “Don’t underestimate how tough it was for me,” adding that bailing out Wall Street was “contrary to my politics” and “political poison.” He urged Varoufakis to “swallow bitter stuff.” (The White House declined to comment about the conversation.)
Varoufakis had gone to Washington for three days of back-to-back meetings at a spring gathering of the world’s senior financial officials. Shortly before his White House appointment, he and Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s powerful finance minister, had both spoken at the Brookings Institution, with a half-hour pause between their appearances. This was not quite long enough to suppress jokey talk, in the audience, about the risks of an accidental summit in the foyer. (At a joint press conference in Berlin, in February, Schäuble said of their first meeting, “We agreed to disagree”—a statement with which Varoufakis immediately disagreed.)
Since 2010, Greece’s economic fate has been determined largely by representatives of Germany, Europe’s largest economy, in particular by Merkel and Schäuble. The ill feeling between the two nations draws on memories of the Second World War, and is shaded by German perceptions of Greeks as “insufferable spendthrift overreachers,” as Varoufakis once put it. The distrust was not eased when, during a televised interview on a German current-affairs program, Varoufakis was shown a 2013 clip of himself speaking at the Subversive Festival, in Zagreb—an event that also featured Oliver Stone. In the clip, Varoufakis described having made the case, three years earlier, that Greece should default and “stick the finger to Germany”—he raised a finger—“and say, ‘Well, you can now solve this problem by yourself.’ ” The clip’s editing dishonestly disguised the fact that Varoufakis had been referring to 2010—when he did argue for defaulting on the private bank loans—but his unusually flustered on-air response was to insist that the clip had been faked, and that he had never made the gesture in his life.
The two Brookings appearances displayed contrasting forms of certainty, or arrogance. Varoufakis charmed with rhetoric: European leaders, he suggested, seemed intent on solving a continental crisis “by exporting it to the rest of the globe.” Schäuble spoke as though he were briefing colleagues, his combative thoughts smoothed by an avuncular delivery. “In Europe, we have good reason not to provide financial assistance without demanding something in return,” he said, amiably. A little later: “Even Yanis Varoufakis, who is a famous economist, is not the first economist in world history—no!”
At the White House, Varoufakis repeated a line that he had used at Brookings: “Mr. President, my government is planning, and I am planning, to compromise, compromise, and compromise, but we’re not going to be compromised.” (“He liked that,” Varoufakis recalled.) Varoufakis told him, “Mr. President, of course one has to suffer costs in order to get the benefits, but the question is the balance. There has to be a positive balance.” He went on, “We are being asphyxiated for trying to simulate what you did, right?”

Obama showed more solidarity than Varoufakis was expecting. “I know—austerity sucks,” Obama said. (“He used those words. Very un-Presidential.”) According to Varoufakis, the President was referring less to austerity’s unpleasantness than to its ineffectiveness. Obama meant that austerity “doesn’t work—it creates misery, and it’s self-perpetuating, and it’s self-defeating.”
Varoufakis told Obama that he hadn’t felt quite the same comradeship when speaking with the U.S. Treasury Secretary. “Jack Lew is not toeing the Obama line,” he said.
“You know how finance ministers are,” Obama replied. “They’re more conservative.”
Varoufakis changed planes in Munich, and flew on to Athens. On the jet bridge, a Greek woman urged him, “Be strong. Keep saying no.” And, on a day when the lead story in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung quoted an unnamed source, from among Greece’s creditors, describing Greek negotiators as “incompetent and inexperienced,” a man with a German accent introduced himself, saying, “People tell me I look like you.” He also had a shaved head and, like Varoufakis—who wore Doc Martens shoes to the White House—had carried some youthful fashion thoughts into middle age. Varoufakis posed for a joint photograph.
On the tarmac, a frugal ministerial Hyundai awaited. We drove out of the airport and into a car advertisement—a stretch of empty, velvety highway built shortly before the 2004 Summer Olympics. I later spoke to Elina Psykou, a Greek filmmaker, whose next movie will be set in the Athens of this era. She described her script as a study of denial.

It was a Sunday, which gave Varoufakis a break from a weekday habit of checking his phone every minute or two for real-time data about the finances of the Greek state. “I don’t care about stock markets,” he said. “They can fall as much as they want.” Rather, the figure that commanded his attention was an unpublished one: “The balance, the bottom line.” After the election, Varoufakis had refused to sign an agreement keeping Greece on the previously agreed path, which impeded a final, €7.2 billion payment of bailout money. This action helped return Greece to recession, and did nothing to forestall its debt repayments. The Greek crisis had already become one of contraction, poverty, and unemployment, but this spring Greece’s debtor status took on a banana-republic dimension. Pensioners withdrew their life savings from banks, and Greeks anticipated their government running out of cash. In the car, Varoufakis acknowledged his job’s discomforts, then brightened: “At least it makes more sense than people looking at their Bloomberg terminals just to make a margin call, right?” He was not downcast, and could still muster the thought that Merkel, in time, would help to engineer a deal.
In Washington, however, there had been little to encourage him. He said that he had told troika representatives, “If they think that, with this Chinese water-drop torture, we’re going to succumb, they’ll be disappointed. So the blood will be on their hands.”

As we drove, Varoufakis talked of his father, George, whose example of stubbornness had helped shape him. In 1946, during Greece’s civil war against Communist insurgents, George Varoufakis was arrested as a student leftist, and refused to sign a denunciation of Communism. He was imprisoned for four years, and repeatedly tortured. His signature would have freed him. I later met the senior Varoufakis—the courtly chairman of a steel company who, at ninety, still goes to the office every day. He told me that for years after he was freed he couldn’t listen to Johann Strauss: his torturers had “put on waltzes, very high, in order not to hear our voices, our screaming.”
After George Varoufakis returned to college, a female student kept an eye on him for a paramilitary right-wing group—“Stasi stuff,” as Yanis put it. But she fell in love with George, and they married. Yanis was born in 1961. During the military dictatorship of 1967 to 1974, Varoufakis’s uncle, a libertarian, was imprisoned for participating in small-scale terrorism. Varoufakis recalled his excitement when charged with smuggling notes to him on prison visits.
In the Hyundai, Varoufakis’s phone rang, and he talked for a minute in Greek. Afterward, he smiled; it had been a cabinet colleague who was “blessed with natural optimism.” He went on, “Without knowing anything, he says, ‘Welcome back, I’m sure you did a fantastic job, everything will go fantastically well!’ ” Varoufakis laughed. “How the fuck does he know?”
The day after Varoufakis returned from Washington, he rode his motorcycle to the ministry. He met with three German bankers who, in an attempt at solidarity, arrived without ties, then he chaired a discussion about the creation of a more autonomous Greek tax authority—a long-standing ambition of the troika. Much Greek income goes unreported. According to a 2012 analysis, the average declared monthly income of self-employed Greek medical workers was sixteen hundred and twenty-eight euros; those workers spent an average of sixteen hundred and sixty euros on monthly debt repayments.
That evening, Varoufakis rode to Maximos Mansion, a few minutes away, to see Tsipras. Varoufakis described his Washington meetings, and made the case for the new tax body. They were together for three and a half hours. “He bought it, so that was good,” Varoufakis later recalled.
After ten, he e-mailed me, and I went to his home, on the top floor of an apartment building in northern Athens. Varoufakis and Stratou had just moved in. Their previous apartment, in a building belonging to Stratou’s parents, was featured in Paris Match earlier this year, in photographs that showed Varoufakis at the piano, and larking around on a roof with Stratou, the Acropolis behind them. The photographs became a small scandal. Although that apartment did not look opulent, Stratou and her family are known to be well off, and to many observers the couple appeared rather comfortable at a time of national privation. The more cutting charge might be vanity: they seemed overly confident in their lean, well-tailored, Mediterranean allure, and had failed to anticipate the posed garishness of the Paris Match style. “Aesthetically, it was horrible,” Varoufakis told me. “It was my fault.” Given that fuss, it seems unkind to report that their new home is lovely: thousands of square feet of high-bourgeois modernism involving art, parquet flooring, and low, pale sofas.
Varoufakis and Stratou attended the same private secondary school, in Athens, although they don’t recall meeting. In 1978, Varoufakis enrolled at the University of Essex, a radical college northeast of London, where he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. He recalled that, as the face of the Black Students’ Alliance—a role he was persuaded to take by black students—he would “get up and say, ‘We blacks believe . . .’ And then everybody would laugh.” He continued, “Then I would look at them and say, ‘Black is a state of mind, and we Greeks are the blacks of Europe, together with the Irish.’ ”
Varoufakis and Stratou’s relationship accommodates the kind of recurring, and mostly amiable, friction suggested by the phrase “O.K., you tell the story.” Varoufakis said that, as a foreigner in Britain during the Thatcher era, he always felt the threat of street violence. Stratou, who studied at St. Martin’s College, a few years later, disputed this memory. Varoufakis cried out, “You were in paradise, in London!” This spring, a Greek Web site speculated that Jarvis Cocker, the former lead singer of Pulp, was referring to Stratou in “Common People,” the band’s much-loved 1995 single. The autobiographical song starts, “She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge / She studied sculpture at St. Martin’s College.” It goes on to quote her: “I want to live like common people / I want to do whatever common people do.” Varoufakis later told me that Stratou was the only Greek sculpture student at St. Martin’s at the time.

Varoufakis studied economics, but came to think of it as “computerized astrology” in its mainstream academic form. (He has written of his hope, as a professor, to present economics as “a contested terrain on which armies of ideas clash mercilessly.”) He turned largely to mathematics before returning to economics with a Ph.D. thesis about the dynamics of workers’ strikes. He also briefly competed in professional car races. “I was very good at qualifying”—when other drivers weren’t on the track—but “crap at the races.” He added, “I was either insufficiently aggressive or, when I would try to overcompensate, too aggressive. I crashed a number of times.”
Varoufakis, who has compared his place in economics to that of “an atheist theologian ensconced in a Middle Ages monastery,” held various junior posts at British universities before joining the faculty at the University of Sydney, where he met his first wife, a Greek-Australian historian. In 2000, Varoufakis returned to Greece, to take a professorship at the University of Athens. He published on game theory, and occasionally advised George Papandreou, then in opposition. Varoufakis recently described him to me as having the economic mind of a five-year-old. Varoufakis never voted for Papandreou; nor did he immediately align with Syriza when it was founded, in 2004, as a grouping of small leftist parties. “I was in tune with them, but they were all over the place—ecologists, Communists.”

In 2005, he separated from his wife, not long after the birth of their daughter; she and her mother live in Australia. He later met Stratou, who asked for his advice about an art project involving fraught or disputed borderlines. Soon after, they embarked on a yearlong series of trips to photograph such borders in Cyprus, Kashmir, and elsewhere. He wrote an accompanying text, “The Globalizing Wall,” and began publishing personal and cultural essays. He was emerging as an all-purpose public intellectual in the mold of Slavoj Žižek.
Being “of a Marxist disposition,” as Varoufakis told me, he had tended to see calm as a prelude to turmoil: “Most of my colleagues in economics think of crises as preventable accidents—a mistake of some policy—whereas, if you look at the world from my perspective, capitalism generates them.” Before 2007, he said, he had begun to feel “very jittery” about the instability of a system in which the flow of global capital had come to rely on what he saw as America’s deliberate policy of causing its deficits to rise. Later, in a spirited book, “The Global Minotaur,” which some reviewers described as conspiratorially inclined, he recycled a metaphor that he’d once used to critique U.S. foreign policy. America was an economic beast held in check only by the constant movement of overseas money through Wall Street. “By 2007, I realized that we were facing the prospect of a new Great Depression,” he said. Then, after the Lehman Brothers collapse, “the statements from Europe were mind-bogglingly stupid,” he said. “Like, ‘This is an Anglo-American problem. We are safe because we have safe practices in the banking sectors of Europe.’ Yeah, right.”
When the crisis hit Greece, Varoufakis began his blog, and, with Stuart Holland, a British academic and former politician, published an essay, “A Modest Proposal.” It suggested ways in which the E.C.B. and the E.U. could press the banks holding bonds of struggling eurozone countries to forgive much of this debt, and envisaged a Europe that could issue its own bonds and fund stimulus investments—effectively putting German savings to work in Ireland and Greece. Varoufakis, who had argued against Greece’s decision, in 2001, to adopt the euro, wrote that if there was going to be a currency union then it should not be half-baked, and should function more like the one that joins California and Alabama.
Varoufakis recognized the many frailties in Greece’s economy, but he preferred to talk of a banking crisis rather than a debt crisis, and of a European crisis rather than a Greek one. If Greece had over-borrowed, the real villains were the lenders standing in line for bailout funds. The euro had created a delusion: banks had lent to Greece as if it were a student backed by wealthy parental guarantors. But there were no such guarantees, and when the lending stopped Greece was trapped by the currency that had indulged it. The country couldn’t painfully devalue its currency, like, say, Argentina at the start of the century. (A devaluation makes your people poor but your goods enticingly cheap.) And the euro lacked a body like the Federal Reserve, or the Bank of England, that could feed newly minted cash into the Greek economy; to Varoufakis’s frustration, the E.C.B. wasn’t that kind of bank.

In part because Varoufakis had once advised Papandreou, his views were widely noticed. “I acquired the two things I hate—fans and enemies,” he told me. One night in 2011, he was in bed when the phone rang. A man threatened Varoufakis’s family with violence if he didn’t stop criticizing a particular Greek bank.
At the time, Golden Dawn, Greece’s neo-Nazi party, was gaining support. Stratou said to Varoufakis, “Either you don’t get involved, or you get into politics to protect us, or we get out of the country.” In 2012, Varoufakis was offered a visiting professorship at the University of Texas, and they moved to Austin. Varoufakis taught a graduate class on the crisis and, with Galbraith, revised “A Modest Proposal.” “They were knights trying to save the world!” Stratou told me, laughing at her choice of words but sincere in her admiration.
Tsipras, a former civil engineer, was elected to parliament in 2009, and became Syriza’s leader. In 2014, he urged Varoufakis to represent the party in elections for the European Parliament, which meets in Brussels. Varoufakis declined. In that election, Syriza won more seats than any other party. Greece’s right-of-center government was weakened, and it was further weakened that November, when the troika announced that Greece had fallen short of its promised reforms and demanded additional action—including spending cuts—before releasing a payment of €7.2 billion. By now, a Greek election was likely, with Syriza’s victory almost inevitable. Tsipras had admired Varoufakis’s writing and felt that he would be an effective minister of finance, despite his inexperience and his limited links to Syriza. Varoufakis agreed to come home. According to Stratou, he “felt that, when he’s eighty years old, looking back, if he hadn’t taken that opportunity it would feel like a betrayal of his own country.” She recalled how often he said, “If I were in conversation with Merkel, this is what I would do . . .”
Two days after Varoufakis was sworn in as minister, he slipped into Syntagma Square, alone. Yorgos Avgeropoulos, the documentary filmmaker, was waiting there to introduce him to Emmi Christoulas, the daughter of the pharmacist who had committed suicide. Varoufakis laid a flower by the cypress where Christoulas had died. (Varoufakis didn’t alert the press, or mention it to me, but he allowed Avgeropoulos to film it.) Tsipras’s first act as Prime Minister was to lay flowers at the memorial in an Athens suburb where two hundred Greek resistance fighters were executed by Nazi forces, in 1944. German newspapers took note of the symbolism.

At the ministry, Varoufakis answered a call from Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch minister of finance. Dijsselbloem is the current president of the Eurogroup, the constitutionally ambiguous but all-powerful committee comprising the finance ministers of countries using the euro. (There are nineteen such countries; nine others, including the U.K., are in the E.U. but not in the eurozone.) Nobody in the Eurogroup has more power than Schäuble, but Dijsselbloem has taken on the role of enforcer—or, to quote one unfriendly observer, water carrier. If Greece wanted to modify the economic “program” mandated by the troika’s loans, the Eurogroup’s blessing was required. In Varoufakis’s description, the nineteen governments could be divided into three groups: “There is a very small minority that believes in austerity, and in this program.” Germany leads this minority. A second group—Ireland, Spain, Portugal, the Baltic states—has pursued austerity programs, and now fears that Syriza, if successful, would leave those countries exposed to radical domestic opposition. “Then there’s another group, of substantial countries like Italy and France—especially France—who don’t believe in austerity. But they fear that if they side with us they will be punished.” Their punishment would be austerity.
Greece’s arrangement with the troika was set to expire on February 28th. If Syriza did not commit to the existing terms, and the program lapsed, the E.C.B. would no longer be obliged to supply emergency lines of credit to Greek banks, which would consequently run out of cash. The country would have to print its own money, taking it out of the euro. Varoufakis’s declared hope was that, before February 28th, the Eurogroup would agree to a “bridge”—a short-term renewal of loans, which would provide time to negotiate modifications to the program. Syriza could, for example, delay privatizations at a time when prices for state assets were unusually low, and uphold an election promise to raise state pensions and the minimum wage. Varoufakis also wanted some debt relief.
On the phone, Varoufakis recalled, Dijsselbloem “was perfectly pleasant,” asking, “What do you want to do?” Promising to negotiate in good faith, Varoufakis requested the bridge. According to Varoufakis, Dijsselbloem said, “Sounds reasonable. I’ll fly in in a couple of days.”
“It was downhill from that moment,” Varoufakis said.
Arriving in Athens, Dijsselbloem asked the same question, and Varoufakis gave the same answer. This time, Dijsselbloem replied, “That will not do.” (“I have no doubt that he was pulled into line between the telephone conversation and the visit,” Varoufakis told me. He declined to name Germany explicitly, but added, “You can imagine.”) Varoufakis asked Dijsselbloem, “Are you threatening me, on Day One, with Grexit?” Dijsselbloem said that a crashed program wouldn’t necessitate Greece’s exit from the euro.

“But the banks will shut down,” Varoufakis said.
“Yes, sure,” Dijsselbloem replied. (Last week, a spokesperson for the Dutch finance ministry said, “We never comment on reports of discussions held behind closed doors. Mr. Dijsselbloem is trying to enjoy a government summer recess. I would advise Mr. Varoufakis to do the same.”)
At a subsequent joint press conference, Varoufakis declared that Greece would continue negotiating with the E.U., the E.C.B., and the I.M.F. individually, but not as a bloc that had the power—deeply resented—to embed its officers in Greek ministries. He was unilaterally attempting to detach debt from day-to-day interference in Greece’s governance (or, as he put it to me, “a pattern of humiliation”). Varoufakis made his point in Greek. There was a pause while Dijsselbloem caught up through headset translation. Varoufakis now claims that, privately, Dijsselbloem had acknowledged that troika reform was inevitable. But that’s not how it looked. Dijsselbloem took off his headset and stood up to leave; Varoufakis’s face displayed the smiling, embarrassed faux-innocence of someone who has said more than he planned to say in a domestic argument. Dijsselbloem “was livid,” Varoufakis told me. “He whispered in my ear, ‘You just killed the troika.’ ”
Varoufakis’s fame grew the next week, after he left his suitcase in an Athens taxi. Arriving in Paris, late in the evening, at the start of a tour of European capitals, he had only the clothes he was wearing. That night, at Zara, he bought two shirts and a pair of pants. But he relied on Theodore Passas, Greece’s Ambassador to France, for a coat. “He’s a snazzy Ambassador,” Varoufakis told me. Passas lent Varoufakis a gangsterish hybrid of motorcycle jacket and hunting coat, and after Varoufakis wore it to meet George Osborne in London—over an electric-blue shirt—the European press wrote many delighted columns about a minister of state who looked as if he might be armed. Varoufakis told me, “It worked out fabulously. They called me a Russian mafioso, right?” On this visit, Lord Lamont, the British Conservative politician, who had sent Varoufakis many supportive messages (to the point where Varoufakis regarded him as “my best mate”), took him to a club on Pall Mall for breakfast. As Lamont explained to the Financial Times, “they wouldn’t accept that his national dress was not a tie.”

Varoufakis told me in April that Osborne agreed with him on “everything.” Varoufakis’s habit was to believe—or claim to believe—that what a politician said kindly over lunch was more sincere than what he broadcast in public. (A spokesman for the British Treasury declined to comment on Osborne’s conversations.) Varoufakis told me that he and Michel Sapin, the French finance minister, talked “like brothers when we’re alone.” He added, “He’s saying, ‘We’ll change Europe together!’ Then we go out—press conference, microphones, and cameras—and he says, ‘Greece must try harder, must accept the conditions.’ ” Varoufakis said that, when he challenged Sapin about this, the mournful reply was “Yanis, France is not what it used to be”—that is, its power had diminished. A spokesperson for Sapin denied this account, adding that Varoufakis “is an intelligent and flamboyant man, but lacks political sense.”

Ten days after the election, Varoufakis attended his first Eurogroup meeting. “People think it’s like a courtroom drama,” Varoufakis said. “It is not. It is just grindingly boring.”
The Eurogroup meets in private, each of the nineteen ministers sitting with a single colleague. At the meetings that Varoufakis attended, the creditor institutions were also represented. After a few opening remarks, the ministers spoke in turn. Schäuble dominated the room. “All eyes are on him, and what he’s going to say, and the tone in which he’s going to say it,” Varoufakis recalled. Then the attendees attempted to agree on a communiqué. At this point, “all hell would break loose,” Varoufakis said. When he found a draft unacceptable, he raised his hand: “Jeroen, this sentence I can’t live with. I need to add this adjective here and remove that verb there.” Schäuble often objected to Varoufakis’s suggestions. “This can go on for six hours,” Varoufakis said.
Breaking with tradition, Varoufakis’s ministry later made public his opening remarks at his first Eurogroup session. Varoufakis said, “We must earn your trust without losing the trust of our people—of the voters amongst which we enjoy, for now, sizable approval ratings. For such approval is an important capital good in Europe’s struggle to sort Greece out and to render it stable.” He went on, “It will simply not be possible for our country to grow if we remain on the growth-sapping austerity path.”
Varoufakis recalled that Schäuble seemed “very cross,” and said, “When there’s a program that everybody has agreed to, that’s it. Elections cannot change anything, because, then, every time there’s an election everything will change.” (A spokesperson for the German finance ministry said, “Meetings of Eurogroup finance ministers are confidential.”) As Varoufakis put it to me, the idea that elections could change nothing was the “greatest gift one could give to the Chinese Communist Party.” That’s overheated, of course, and democratic governments tend to respect the binding agreements signed by their predecessors. But it was interesting, at Brookings, to hear Schäuble say that “France would be happy if someone could force” its parliament to pass unpopular labor-market reforms. It wasn’t quite clear what Schäuble meant by “France,” if it was neither its people nor its parliament.
During that first meeting, Varoufakis said, he was asked to approve a communiqué that pretended “nothing had changed.” He asked to edit “the program” to “the amended program.” Recalling this request, Varoufakis described it as “very conciliatory,” although it might be more accurate to say that it was not.

Schäuble vetoed the edit. Varoufakis said, “I veto that veto.” During a break in the subsequent discussion, Dijsselbloem told Varoufakis that the opportunity to meet the deadline of February 28th—more than two weeks away—would expire the next morning, because of the time required by some countries to secure parliamentary approval of a renewal. If Varoufakis didn’t sign? Dijsselbloem said, “Then you’ve missed the train”—in other words, the loan agreement would be cancelled.
Varoufakis called Tsipras in Athens. “He said, ‘Don’t sign it. Fuck him.’ No, he didn’t say that, but that’s more or less what he meant. And so I said, ‘No deal.’ ”
The next morning, Dijsselbloem came to Varoufakis’s hotel to talk. Given that the deadline had passed, Varoufakis decided that Dijsselbloem had been “bullshitting” him, and asked, facetiously, if the train had reversed into the station. Varoufakis told me, “He had lied to a minister, when he was serving as president, on that minister’s first rookie appearance! His duty is to keep members of the Eurogroup informed about the legal process, and he lied to me about that. That’s just unacceptable.”
On February 20th, the Eurogroup reached a temporary agreement. Greece gained an extension until June 30th, before which it could propose revisions to the program. For the moment, Syriza agreed not to pursue its key spending plans. Though Varoufakis chose to see the agreement as an opportunity “to write our own program and to be judged on that,” others saw it as Syriza in retreat. The government had shelved its campaign commitments while gaining no guarantee of revisions, and had failed to collect €7.2 billion. “The Greek government will certainly have difficulty explaining this to its voters,” Schäuble said to reporters.

Varoufakis told me that, immediately after he signed the communiqué, “the troika was knocking on our door,” as if nothing had changed. “We had to say, ‘No, this is not what we signed up for.’ ” He later regretted not making his frustration more public. “I should have impressed upon the Prime Minister that we had to blast this one out of the water—condemn them for backtracking.”
In April, as Varoufakis flew back from Washington, Greece was being assailed for not having yet submitted a comprehensive revised program. “We could have moved faster,” Varoufakis acknowledged. “Then again, the other side was really not moving at all.” The other side may not have recognized any obligation to move. To them, Varoufakis was a student late with an assignment unlikely to impress.
He quoted a line sometimes attributed to Henry Kissinger: “Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe?” He was struggling to deal with governments and institutions that were “fragmented, both horizontally and vertically.” He explained, “Horizontally, Merkel and Schäuble don’t see eye to eye. They have different ideas of what they want from us. He wants us out of the eurozone. Merkel doesn’t.” (The spokesperson for the German finance ministry said, “Mr. Schäuble and Chancellor Angela Merkel always act in a coördinated manner.”) Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish Prime Minister, wanted Syriza out of power; François Hollande, the French President, didn’t. Varoufakis offered me an example of “vertical fragmentation”: he believed that Lagarde, the I.M.F. managing director, “doesn’t want us out, and would like to bridge an accommodation, but the little people that she sends in the troika—these people have an agenda of their own.” He went on, “I spend all my life these days on the phone, trying to avert these fragmentation problems, coördination failures, little agendas. We don’t even get to talk about important things. I’ve been saying to all these people, ‘Can we agree on four major reform bills and rush them through parliament?’ ” He had argued that interim reforms—however incomplete in the eyes of the troika—would release “a wave of optimism” among potential investors in Greece.

But, Varoufakis said, he’d found no market in Europe for such thoughts. At the level of the Eurogroup, Varoufakis told me, the conversation was “all about the rules.” It was not a forum in which to discuss debt unsustainability, or the rarity of economic growth under austerity conditions. Varoufakis told me that he was “accused of talking about economics.” Once, Varoufakis was asked what Greece’s target surplus should be, if not 4.5 per cent of G.D.P. He “had to give a lecture” about the variables that made the question unanswerable in that form. “They’re not economists,” Varoufakis said. “Most of them are lawyers.”
Varoufakis, in his negotiations, adopted a refrain: “You may not like us, but we have a few things going for us. First, we’re not corrupt yet. Second, we’re pro-European. Third, we are democrats. We want this country to be reformed. Help us do it. Don’t crash us. If you crash us, we will end up with very nasty people taking over.”
According to a Eurogroup official, Varoufakis “didn’t seem to understand that the other people in the room were constrained by their national parliaments. They are bound by certain treaties. Those constraints fly in the face of pure economics. The eurozone is complicated, and he had no understanding or sympathy for that.”
Meanwhile, at lower-level “technical” meetings, representatives of Greece’s creditors pressed Varoufakis’s colleagues about “the granular stuff”: about modernizing the milk market, for example, or allowing notaries to compete on price. Greece’s program was built out of such policy details; Varoufakis felt that the ideas were often “anti-growth rubbish,” and that the process was pointless if it ignored economic fundamentals in a way that could only prolong a five-year dynamic of “extend and pretend.” He recalled trying to introduce a document that contained the words “debt restructuring.” He was told, “If it has those words, we can’t have it. Take it back.”

According to troika officials, Greek negotiators barely engaged at the technical level. Initially, this appeared to reflect only incompetence, but later there seemed to be some strategy in it—an effort to force the conversation into the political realm. In the end, Greece’s milk market was discussed, in the middle of the night, by Europe’s heads of state.
In the opinion of one troika official, Varoufakis’s disregard for the granular—like the ease with which he requested other European taxpayers to settle Greece’s account—had an undemocratic air. “One may dismiss this as technocrats looking at numbers,” the official said. “But, if something doesn’t add up and there is a gap, the gap has to be financed by somebody.” He went on, “Adding up is the essence of democracy.”
When Greece did engage, I was told by another representative of a troika institution, “the stuff they sent us was extraordinarily naïve.” He recalled a measure, submitted by Varoufakis in March, designed to boost sales-tax compliance by hiring amateur spies: people, including tourists, would be trained to wear hidden cameras. The troika representative said, “It was stunning to see something like this in a document of a minister of an E.U. country.”
A few days before the referendum, Gikas Hardouvelis, a senior Greek economist who was Varoufakis’s predecessor as minister of finance, sat at a café in a northern suburb of Athens, speaking with the tight-mouthed fury of someone who can no longer maintain his public discretion. That week, on successive nights, large crowds had gathered at Syntagma Square, in support of “no” (the working class) and “yes” (the middle and upper-middle classes). Across Athens, posters showed Schäuble in scowling closeup, with the text “For five years he has drunk your blood. Tell him, ‘No!’ ” When I asked an Athens bar owner how he might vote, he asked me to describe the difference between a Winchester and a Magnum. Hardouvelis, a “yes” voter, said, “Only Third World dictatorships have referendums like this, fooling the people and pretending to be a democracy.”

On the day after the January election, before Varoufakis had been sworn in, Hardouvelis represented Greece at a Eurogroup meeting in Brussels. He told the attendees, “Remember one thing. Eighty per cent of the Greek people say they want to be members of the euro area.” In his view, “The Europeans were willing to be flexible, because they knew they had to deal with a leftist government. They were willing to give them something—on the primary surplus for 2016, perhaps.”
Hardouvelis said that Varoufakis had squandered this opportunity: “He managed to have eighteen enemies. That’s all he did!” He described Tsipras as “a guy who has never been outside Greece, has never had to deal with foreigners, so he couldn’t automatically enter the logic of the other side.” Tsipras, whose command of English is tentative, depended on Varoufakis. By the time Tsipras had reduced that dependency, Greece was nearing disaster. “I blame Varoufakis,” Hardouvelis said. “He did a huge disservice to Tsipras, because he knew very well what was going on, and he acted only to promote himself, sacrificing the country and his Prime Minister in the meantime.” This was a common theme in Athens, although it was possible to imagine the argument turned on its head: that is, an adept politician had taken advantage of an unwary but overconfident intellectual. Hasta la victoria siempre!

Some of Hardouvelis’s colleagues had recently told him that University of Sydney academics had expressed relief about Varoufakis leaving Australia, calling him “the most narcissistic man they’d ever met in their lives.” Hardouvelis noted that, in the government office that was once his own, Varoufakis was “too proud” to use the ministerial desk or the office phones. (Varoufakis worked, with a MacBook and a cell phone, at one end of a long conference table.)
Two days before the Sunday referendum, Varoufakis arrived at the ministry at midday. A hundred reporters were outside in the street. We sat at his conference table, and he described the events of the previous week—and his disagreements with Tsipras—in a way that suggested he didn’t plan to remain in office beyond the weekend. He began by saying that, in April, senior U.S. officials had warned him that Greece’s creditors “want to throw you onto the rocks.” On hearing this, Varoufakis had sought to change Greece’s negotiating stance. He began making the case to colleagues for publishing a Greek Plan, on Greece’s terms. With Jeffrey Sachs and others, he wrote a draft in three parts: a fiscal plan, proposals for debt relief, and suggestions for structural reforms.
Varoufakis recalled, “I took it to the P.M., to the negotiating team, and said, ‘I think we should go this way. If you don’t like it, we can make amendments.’ ” A public plan would have been perceived, accurately, as a scornful rejection of the existing negotiations. Tsipras turned down the idea as too risky. (As someone close to the negotiations pointed out to me, one risk was that the plan’s primary author would have been evident—that is, it would be the Varoufakis Plan.)
The consensus on the Greek team was that an agreement could be reached only through the established process. Varoufakis objected: “If we don’t manage to change the structure of the negotiation, then we will never get the agreement.” If his confidence in this strategy now seems foolhardy, it rested on what he regarded as a bedrock of logic. “An unpayable debt will not be paid,” he told me. “It’s like the law of gravity.” His goal was to persuade Greece’s creditors to concede this truth now—not years from now.

At a meeting in Riga, Latvia, in late April, the Eurogroup’s tone toward Greece was sharply critical. One unnamed source told a reporter that Varoufakis was considered a time-waster, a gambler, and an amateur. In a tweet, Varoufakis quoted F.D.R.: “They are unanimous in their hate for me; and I welcome their hatred.”
Tsipras, unsettled by the animosity in Riga, and recognizing Varoufakis’s low opinion of the day-to-day negotiations, reshuffled his team. Varoufakis lost direct oversight of the technical talks.
One evening in May, Varoufakis learned that, two days earlier, Tsipras had made a concession about the primary surplus that Varoufakis regarded as economically and tactically disastrous. “And the Prime Minister, being such a convivial guy, said, ‘Of course I didn’t tell you, because I knew you would disagree!’ ” Varoufakis recalled. “Which, you know, for a finance minister is a bit of a problem.”
The creditors had been pressing for an eventual primary-surplus target of 4.5 per cent of G.D.P. Tsipras, guided by other colleagues, proposed surplus targets that, starting at one per cent, would rise to 3.5 per cent in 2018. Such a figure was still “absurd,” Varoufakis told me. “No economy in Greece’s situation sustainably produces a primary surplus of 3.5 per cent.” Varoufakis asked me to picture someone considering investing, next year, in a new enterprise in Greece. He or she might hope for profits two years later. But “if the Greek state’s debt is unsustainable in 2018, and the government has committed to a 3.5-per-cent primary surplus, what you are telling the investor is ‘You’re going to be taxed through the nose, because the state needs to have this primary surplus.’ No financially minded investor will invest in a country that makes this announcement.”
He went on, “Tsipras gave them austerity hoping that he would secure debt relief.” In Varoufakis’s view, Tsipras “just didn’t understand,” adding, “For non-economists, it’s easy to say, ‘I had two targets, austerity and debt. It would be good to hit both of them, but if I can hit one of them—’ ” He paused. “The politician must compromise.” Varoufakis remained adamant that austerity and debt needed to be addressed simultaneously. Tsipras, meanwhile, had made a concession on the surplus that only weakened the case for debt relief. It’s hard to protest loan repayments while one is officially predicting a budget in the black. “Then they know they can take you to the cleaners,” Varoufakis said. “And then they will demand everything on everything. Which is what happened.” As he put it, sharks are not placated by a little blood.

He considered resigning. “But I happened to be quite popular,” he said. “And if I went I’d damage Alexis badly, in the middle of negotiations.” (Tsipras had privately used the precarious metaphor of two standing dominoes.) For a month, as the June 30th deadline approached, and as Greece made further concessions, Varoufakis maintained hope that the I.M.F. might strengthen Greece’s hand by describing the country’s debt as unsustainable. The I.M.F. has a constitutional obligation to avoid making loans in which wishful thinking informs the repayment schedule. (Such an objection was made, belatedly, on July 14th.)

Varoufakis felt unsupported. Although Tsipras seemed to share his urgency about debt relief, Varoufakis said, there were “comrades who were saying, ‘Look, even that doesn’t matter. Let’s just have an agreement.’ Fatigue sets in after a while.”
At a Eurogroup meeting in Brussels, on June 25th, Varoufakis was invited to sign a deal that offered five months of limited further funding. The provisions included all of Greece’s concessions and no debt relief. Varoufakis regarded it as “the kind of offer you make when you don’t want an agreement.”
Tsipras was furious. “He’d had to tread on every red line this government had drawn,” Varoufakis said. According to Varoufakis, Dijsselbloem said, “Yanis, you can consider this a take-it-or-leave-it offer.” (Dijsselbloem has disputed this.)
Varoufakis believes that the Eurogroup, having decided that Syriza “is a government we don’t want,” deliberately prolonged negotiations, in order to weaken Greece’s economy. In June, Varoufakis told Pierre Moscovici, the economic-policy commissioner for the E.U., that “Schäuble wants us out of the euro.” (Schäuble had told Varoufakis this himself.) “But he doesn’t care whether our government falls or not. And I feel that Merkel wants us in the euro, but she wants our government to fall.” According to Varoufakis, Moscovici concurred with this analysis. Schäuble’s domestic popularity, and his seniority, had given him the freedom to adopt a position toward Greece that is at odds with Merkel’s. Der Spiegel recently described Germany’s resulting approach as “a curious mix of indecision and brutality.”
At the June 25th meeting, Varoufakis said, Schäuble announced that the deal was too soft on the Greeks for it to pass through the Bundestag. “Of course, when Schäuble speaks, the Lithuanians, the Slovaks, the Finns go along with him. They say, ‘We can’t push it through our parliaments!’ ” According to Varoufakis, “Dijsselbloem seemed quite perturbed. He wanted to pressure me to accept it. I said, ‘Wolfgang cannot push it through his parliament—why can I?’ ”
The next morning, Tsipras brought the members of the Greek team together at a Brussels hotel, asking them to leave their cell phones outside the room. He said that he was calling a referendum of “yes” or “no” to the terms offered by the Eurogroup. The Eurogroup met once more, the next day. “That was very unpleasant, because I had to defend the principles of democracy to a group that doesn’t care very much about democracy,” Varoufakis said. “Actually, they are positively against it. I was told, in no uncertain terms, ‘How dare you put such complex issues in front of an electorate ?’ ” He requested a four-week program extension, arguing that “the Greek people should be able to deliberate on this in some peace and quiet.” The Eurogroup refused him.

I asked Varoufakis about the sight of elderly Greeks struggling to collect social-security payments, and of lines at A.T.M.s. “We didn’t close down the banks,” he said. “The Eurogroup did. I can’t take moral responsibility for something that they did.” He went on, “There are times when you say, ‘To hell with it, I’m not going to sign something I disagree with. And stuff the consequences!’ I’m not a consequentialist.”
I saw him at the end of the day, at the ministry. Outside, there had been a skirmish between riot police and anarchists; there was a slight sting of tear gas in Syntagma Square. The ministry had lowered a metal shutter over its glass front door. Varoufakis was standing in the lobby, quite still, shoulders set back, his motorcycle helmet looped over one arm. “The economic arguments have disappeared from the scene,” he said. Schäuble had by then spoken publicly about a Grexit. If the moment was alarming, it was also clarifying. “Now it’s ‘We’ll crash them, even if it means crashing ourselves.’ Like at the beginning of the First World War.” The metal shutter rattled upward and, on the other side of the glass, a bank of television cameras was revealed.
Varoufakis was at home as the referendum results came in, two evenings later. On the TV news, maps of Greece were entirely colored in the orange of “no.”
By the day of the referendum, the question on the ballots referred to a negotiation that had concluded. The bailout program had lapsed, and the offered terms were no longer on offer. The referendum had become an obscure gauge of national mood and self-image. Sixty-one per cent voted “no,” in support of Syriza’s line. But Greece’s banks were closed, and a Grexit now seemed imminent.

On the night of the referendum result, Varoufakis met with Tsipras and said, “Reactivate me fully or replace me.” Tsipras offered him the Ministry of Economy, Infrastructure, Shipping and Tourism. Varoufakis declined. He resigned the next morning.
On July 8th, after consultations with other Greek leaders, Tsipras proposed a new, three-year bailout, with fresh austerity measures. The Eurogroup responded with a proposal more severe and humiliating than anything discussed in previous months. On July 12th, Tsipras, having met with European leaders for seventeen hours, agreed to recommend the terms to his parliament. He had secured only minor modifications, and only a hint of future debt relief. Greece agreed to place fifty billion euros’ worth of state assets in a privatization trust fund; troika officials would be embedded, again, in ministries in Athens. “Read and weep,” Varoufakis wrote on his blog.
Before the deal could be signed, Greece was obliged to introduce reform legislation. On July 15th, the parliament met to discuss a first batch of measures, including pension cuts and sales-tax increases, which would immediately raise the price of hundreds of goods and services, from fertilizer to funerals.

That night, Molotov cocktails were thrown in Syntagma Square; in a television interview, Tsipras made a baldly consequentialist case. He accepted responsibility for “signing a text that I do not believe in but that I am obliged to implement.” He continued, “The worst thing a captain could do while he is steering a ship during a storm, as difficult as it is, is to abandon the helm.” Referring to Varoufakis, he said, “Being an excellent academic doesn’t necessarily make one a good politician.”
Varoufakis remained a member of parliament, and he was one of thirty-two Syriza members, out of a hundred and forty-nine, who voted “no” that night. He was regularly updating his blog and addressing his six hundred thousand Twitter followers. (Tsipras has half as many.) “I’m here to stay,” Varoufakis told an Italian reporter. In a radio interview, he said that Tsipras “didn’t have what it took sentimentally, emotionally, at that moment, to carry that ‘no’ vote to Europe—and use it as a weapon.”
A few days later, comments that Tsipras had made to advisers were leaked to the press. He said that he had “read heroic statements,” but had “heard no alternatives to the blackmailing ultimatum of July 12th.” He asked if his leftist opponents had a plan that would look any different from Wolfgang Schäuble’s.
When a second batch of legislation reached parliament, on July 22nd, Varoufakis voted “yes.” If he had been edging toward a sustained public challenge to Tsipras, this was a change of course. When I spoke to him on the phone the next day, he said that in the hours before the debate he’d vacillated between “yes” and an abstention. The bailout was not viable, he said: “It was a coup d’état.” Had he still been minister, he would have taken the mandate of the referendum and dared the Eurogroup: “Do it, just do it!” But he had decided to be led, he said, by a sense of solidarity with Tsipras and Syriza. He then listed various details of the legislation—omissions and inclusions—that had given him just enough permission to vote “yes.” As he described his path to compromise, I seemed to be hearing a politician becoming comfortable with the discomfort of politics.
I had last seen Varoufakis at his ministry office, on the morning of his resignation. There was the sound of a shredder humming. In a conference room, he thanked his staff, and discussed the fact that his friend Euclid Tsakalotos had been invited to replace him. Varoufakis returned to his office, in high spirits, and started boxing up books. He observed that his resignation had pushed up the value of the euro. “I am a paragon of stability,” he said. He looked at his phone. “Now I can delete Wolfgang Schäuble’s cell number.” A colleague suggested that he save it, for prank calls.
Varoufakis then said that he would miss his prime opponent. He liked Schäuble, “on a personal level.” Varoufakis went on, “He has a vision. It’s a wrong vision, but he’s very lucid about it. He’s a man of principle. And I like conviction politicians.”

Greece’s Ex-Finance Minister Tells All - The New Yorker

For many refugees, journey to Europe begins on Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Efstathiadis) — Wed, 02 Sep 2015 10:48:00 +0000

NALINE MALLA, AYLA JEAN YACKLEY, MARTON DUNAI & ALEKSANDAR VASOVIC

Would-be refugees hoping to flee war in the Middle East are using Facebook as their compass for finding the people smugglers they hope will get them to a better life in Europe.
The US-based website and other social media that were once used to help mobilize the "Arab Spring" uprisings now host information services for those escaping the Syrian civil war and other conflicts in the region.
There refugees can find much of what they need to know, right down to the prices, fees, bribes they will have to pay on a journey fraught with dangers ranging from drowning at sea to suffocating in a lorry.
On top of this, messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Viber help them en route to contact smugglers, friends and families alike while Internet mapping ensures they don't get lost.
In Facebook groups set up in Arabic, users post phone numbers of contacts they say can take refugees from the Turkish coast to nearby Greek islands or even further into Europe, a continent struggling to cope with the migration crisis.
For those seeking a boat ride to Greece, details on where best to cross the Serbian-Hungarian border, or the price for being smuggled all the way from Turkey to Germany, users of these groups appear to offer many of the answers.
An ad posted this week offered a late availability seat in rubber dinghy departing from the Turkish seaside city of Izmir, one of the main points of departure for Syrian refugees trying to reach Greece. The price: $1,200.
"The trip is tomorrow, 100 per cent, for sure," it said. "They'll give you a free life jacket." Another post offered places on a more comfortable "tourist yacht" at 2,500 euros ($2,800).
Facebook guides refugees before they even leave Syria, said Muhammed Salih Ali, head of the Izmir-based Association for Solidarity With Syrian Refugees.
Many are told on Facebook pages to make their way to the Izmir district of Basmane, the informal headquarters in Turkey for traffickers and those hoping to make the passage.
"They are able to make contact on Facebook with intermediaries. Once they are in Basmane, they can also spend three or five days at hotels and investigate their options. They speak with others about which smuggler is more affordable or has a reputation for safety," he said in an interview.
Social media have played a crucial role throughout the turmoil that has gripped the Arab world since 2011.
It helped activists to mobilize protests against their rulers in countries such as Egypt, Libya and Syria itself at the start of the Arab Spring, and then became a means for citizens to report on the violence that followed.
It remains an important organizing tool, and a practical aid for those traveling to and then through the European Union's 26 "Schengen area" states, which have scrapped border controls between each other, as they head north for countries such as Germany and Sweden where they hope help is at hand.
"We use our smart phones primarily, to have a GPS signal so we don't get lost," said a Syrian refugee who gave his name as Ahmad at a Budapest railway station, where he was camping last week with hundreds more refugees.
"We use social media, including WhatsApp, Viber or Facebook to communicate with people we know. If they are already in western Europe, they send information back to us to help us navigate the route," he said. "That includes contact information for smugglers sometimes, as well as things to watch out for."
With Turkey hosting about 1.9 million Syrian refugees fleeing a war that shows no sign of abating, many more people are heading all the time to the EU via neighbouring Greece.
The UN refugee agency has registered more than 4 million Syrian refugees across the Middle East, with another 7 million driven from their homes inside the country by the war in which an estimated 250,000 people have been killed.
Facebook users also exchange the latest news coverage from Europe on the crisis, including one story about German football fans unfurling banners welcoming refugees. Another article covered Hungary's efforts to reinforce its border with Serbia to slow the flow of humanity.
A trip all the way from Istanbul to Germany costs 6,000 euros, according to one advert on Facebook.
"Turkey, then Greece, then [Former Yugoslav Republic of] Macedonia, then Serbia, then Hungary, arriving at Germany. You only have to walk for one hour, and then cross the river, with the rest by car to Germany," it said.
One user uploaded a video purporting to show a group of men wearing lifejackets celebrating as they arrived in a boat on the Greek island of Lesvos. A caption with the video offered two phone numbers for future customers.
Some refugees make the entire journey from Syria using one agent. Hafez, a 31-year-old refugee from Damascus, said he had found his via social networks.
"We got information about agencies, prices, fees, bribes, phones - all logistical details," he told Reuters in an interview in Belgrade.
"We also used Google Maps extensively as people who are crossing to Hungary are sending us waypoints and coordinates. For the moment there are two good spots on the border and one which is potentially problematic," he said, pointing to his smartphone.
"It took me three months to make a decision to leave Syria. Mainly it was hopelessness and despair after years of war and killing that prompted me to leave."
[Reuters]

For many refugees, journey to Europe begins on Facebook | Community | ekathimerini.com

Angry asylum seekers trying to travel to Germany stage demonstration outside Budapest's shuttered Keleti train station

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Efstathiadis) — Wed, 02 Sep 2015 04:15:00 +0000

Photo: Asylum seekers wave their train tickets and lift up children outside the main Eastern Railway station in Budapest. (Reuters: Laszlo Balogh)
Related Story: Eurostar passengers stranded in dark after 'trespassers' enter train tracks
Related Story: Trains carrying hundreds reach Vienna; EU asylum rules under strain
Related Story: 200 asylum seekers uncovered in Austrian border crackdown
Map: Hungary
Hundreds of asylum seekers have staged an angry demonstration outside Budapest's shuttered main international train station, demanding they be allowed to travel on to Germany, as a migration crisis puts the European Union's rules under unprecedented strain.
Key points:

Station evacuated after 500 asylum seekers tried to board trains to Vienna
Hundreds still waiting outside the station
Europe receiving the biggest movement of people since WWII

Hungarian authorities closed the train station altogether, then reopened it but barred entry to the asylum seekers.
About 100 police wearing helmets and wielding batons guarded the station. Dozens of asylum seekers who were inside were forced out.
Video: Asylum seekers protest outside Keleti train station in Budapest (ABC News)

Around 1,000 people waved tickets, clapping, booing and hissing, and shouting "Germany! Germany!" outside the station. Later they sat down, staring down at a police blockade at the entrance of the station.
The crowd later calmed down and several hundred people — men, women and children — remained outside in the baking sun, many sitting on the ground and in the streets around as police blocked entrances to the station.
"I am really pissed off. Why can't the Hungarians just let us go?" one Afghan asylum seeker, Haider, 31, said after ripping up his ticket.
"I worked as a translator for the US army for four years."
A public tannoy announcement was earlier made at the train station, which has been packed with asylum seekers for several weeks, that no trains would be leaving or arriving "until further notice" and asking everyone to leave.
Some of the people then began shouting as hundreds of police — some of them riot officers — began moving them out, although they offered no resistance and there were no clashes.
Hungarian railway authorities said they would allow "only those in possession of the appropriate travel documents and — if necessary — a visa to board trains travelling to western Europe".
Refugee rights group Hungarian Helsinki Committee warned the situation at the station was "very tense and unpredictable".
Photo: Riot police stand on the train track as they monitor asylum seekers. (AFP: Attila Kisbenedek)
The tense situation came as the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) revealed over 234,770 asylum seekers have landed in Greece alone this year, more than the whole Europe-wide figure of 219,000 for all of 2014.
At least 2,600 died on the hazardous journey, drowned or suffocated in dangerous or unseaworthy boats, it added.
Another 114,276 made it to Italy, with most of the other arrivals split between Spain and the island of Malta.

Violence could split Germany: Merkel

A new rise in right-wing violence, largely in the eastern part of the nation triggered by a surge in the number of refugees entering the country, could open up a new split in Germany.

UN children's agency UNICEF said eight out of 10 refugees arriving in Macedonia, one of the main transit points onto western Europe, were fleeing war-torn Syria.
An estimated 100,000 have passed through the Balkan country since June, it said.
A third of them were women and children, and one in every eight women was pregnant, it added.
The arrival of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers has confounded the EU, which has no border controls for travel between 26 countries of its Schengen area but requires those seeking asylum to remain in the country where they first arrive until applications are processed.
Frustrated asylum seekers, pouring into Hungary at a rate of more than 2,000 per day during August, were left to set up ever-growing makeshift camps outside the two main stations in Budapest.
A total of 3,650 people — lots of young men but also large numbers of families with small, exhausted children and a few old people — reached Vienna by train on Monday, this year's biggest daily number, Austrian police said.
Spain's prime minister described the record influx as Europe's "greatest challenge" for the coming years.
"What we're seeing now is the greatest challenge for Europe in the coming years, I have no doubt about that," Mariano Rajoy said during a visit to Berlin.
The crisis has prompted the government in Budapest to reinforce its border with a razor wire fence and deploy thousands of extra police to try to funnel the flow of asylum seekers to legal channels rather than allowing them through unchecked.
Photo: Asylum seekers stand in the Eastern (Keleti) railway station of Budapest behind of a line of the local police on August 31, 2015. (AFP: Attila Kisbenedek)
Biggest movement of people since WWII

Europe is on the receiving end of the biggest movement of people since World War II, with more than 300,000 arriving this year, many fleeing war, persecution and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.
The escalating crisis has divided the 28-member bloc ahead of fresh emergency talks on September 14, with Western European leaders calling for more efforts to help the new arrivals while countries on its eastern borders say they are struggling to cope.
In a show of support for the asylum seekers, 20,000 people took to the streets of Vienna on Monday to protest their ill-treatment, while senior government officials attended a church service for 71 asylum seekers found dead in an abandoned truck last week.
Hungary's government criticised Berlin's easing of asylum rules — aimed at relieving pressure on southern European nations where asylum seekers arrive by sea — as "[building] up the hopes of illegal immigrants".
Under current EU regulations, known as the Dublin provision, asylum seekers must remain in the first European country they enter while their application is being processed.
Those who subsequently travel to other member states face deportation back to the EU country they originally entered.
Hungary has become a frontline country for asylum seekers arriving via the western Balkans as they flee war and unrest in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
The Hungarian government on Monday demanded that Berlin clarify "the legal situation, in order to eliminate this ambiguity and controversy".
"It is in our common interest that all member states abide by EU legislation. Order and legality must be restored at the borders of the European Union," said government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs.
AFP/Reuters
From other news sites:

Daily Telegraph: Migrants protest as Hungary shutters Budapest train station after evacuation ordered
BBC: Migrant crisis: Hungary rail station move sparks protests
Daily Mail: Budapest train station is forced to evacuate as huge numbers of migrants attempt to board carriages heading to Germany hours after Merkel hinted at bringing back border checks
The Australian: Europe migrant crisis: Hungary toughens controls
Yahoo!7 News: Austria orders migrants from train at Hungarian border

Angry asylum seekers trying to travel to Germany stage demonstration outside Budapest's shuttered Keleti train station - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Trains carrying migrants reach Germany as EU asylum checks are waived

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Efstathiadis) — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 08:18:00 +0000

Agencies in Budapest and Vienna Tuesday 1 September 2015

Hundreds of people – many fleeing civil war in Syria – travel to Munich after authorities in Austria and Hungary allow trains to move on

Refugees take German officials by surprise when they arrive on train. Link to video
Packed trains arrived in Austria and Germany on Monday as Hungarian police suddenly allowed migrants camped around Budapest rail stations to leave the country without visa checks.

A laboratory for refugee politics: inside Passau, the 'German Lampedusa'

Passau has emerged as the most popular entry point for refugees on west Balkan route taken by abandoned lorry containing bodies of 71 migrants
Read more

As men, women and children – many fleeing Syria’s civil war – continued to arrive from the east, Hungarian authorities let thousands of undocumented people travel on towards Germany, the favoured destination for many.
The European Union member - part of the bloc’s passport-free Schengen zone - had previously insisted that EU rules prevent them from letting visa-less migrants travel onwards to the west.
Frustrated refugees, pouring into Hungary at a rate of over 2,000 per day during August, had set up ever-growing makeshift camps outside the two main stations in Budapest.
Patience was running thin as the camps grew. “Germany Yes! Hungary No! Let us leave!” chanted hundreds of mostly Syrians during angry protests at the weekend, demanding that a recent easing of asylum rules by Berlin meant they could go at last.
The Schengen agreement requires refugees to seek asylum in the first country they enter under the EU’s Dublin accord, but it emerged last week Berlin had suspended it for Syrians who now be permitted to stay and apply for refugee status .
“First they don’t want to let us in, then they don’t want to let us leave,” a protestor said, a reference to the new razor-wire barrier Hungary’s right-wing government has built on its southern border with Serbia to keep migrants out.
Then on Monday morning the police vanished and the refugees, scarcely believing their eyes, were allowed to climb on-board trains headed west.
“I’m not going to let the train go, it’s far too full!” a flustered stationmaster shouted down his mobile phone beside one Vienna-bound train, his hand shaking. Minutes later, after a phone call to the police, he blew the whistle and the train slowly pulled out - next stop Austria.
Later, as the clock ticked closer to 9.10pm - the last train out - the crowd began to surge forward. A crush developed at the front and panicking parents passed toddlers overhead to aid volunteers, and safety.

Local police form a line at the Eastern (Keleti) railway station in Budapest. Photograph: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images
“Children are fainting, everybody push back three steps!” cried an aid worker in English and Arabic through a loudspeaker, as several dozen police moved in to hold the line.
Order restored for a moment, the police stepped aside, letting hundreds rush through onto the train, before they moved in again to stop the surge once the train was full.
“No more trains until the morning!” cried the aid worker to exasperated groans a few minutes later.
In line with EU rules, an Austrian police spokesman said only those who had not already requested asylum in Hungary would be allowed through, but the sheer pressure of numbers prevailed and trains were allowed to move on.
“Thank God nobody asked for a passport … No police, no problem,” said Khalil, 33, an English teacher from Kobani in Syria. His wife held their sick baby daughter, coughing and crying in her arms, at the Vienna station where police stood by as hundred of people raced to board trains for Germany.
Khalil said he had bought train tickets in Budapest for Hamburg, northern Germany, where he felt sure of a better welcome after traipsing across the Balkans and Hungary.
“Syrians call [Chancellor Angela] Merkel ‘Mama Merkel’,” he said, referring to the German leader’s relatively compassionate response so far to the crisis.
Late on Monday, a train from Vienna to Hamburg was met in Passau, Germany, by police wearing bullet-proof vests, according to a Reuters witness.
Police entered the train and several passengers were asked to accompany them to be registered. About 40 people were seen on the platform. Police said they would be taken to a police station for registration.
Merkel, whose country expects some 800,000 migrants this year, earlier said the crisis could destroy the Schengen open borders accord if other EU countries did not take a greater share.

The Balkans are now the centre of Europe’s people smuggling web

Only a day after 71 people suffocated in a chicken lorry, three children were rescued from a crammed truck in Austria. All had been on a perilous road route controlled by criminal gangs
Read more

“If we don’t succeed in fairly distributing refugees then of course the Schengen question will be on the agenda for many,” she told a news conference in Berlin. “We stand before a huge national challenge. That will be a central challenge not only for days or months but for a long period of time.”
But it is far from certain her view will prevail when EU ministers hold a crisis meeting on 14 September. Britain, which is outside the Schengen zone, says the border-free system is part of the problem, and a bloc of central European countries plans to oppose any binding quotas.

Thousands of protesters demonstrate in the streets of Vienna. The sign reads: ‘Refugees welcome.’ Photograph: Franz Perc/Demotix/Corbis
Refugees who managed to board the trains heading west on Monday mixed with business travellers and tourists, some of whom were angry over the delays to their journey.
“I have a plane to catch from Vienna airport. I took the train because of the road checks and the traffic jam … and now this? Are you kidding me?” said Orsolya Jakab, a Hungarian accountant.
Outside Vienna station, thousands of supporters chanted: “Refugees are welcome here.”
“These people need help, they have come from a horrendous situation, we should not think twice about helping them,” said Ottwin Schober, a retiree from Vienna who had been moved by the discovery of a truckload of 71 dead bodies in Austria last week.
Austrian authorities have stopped hundreds of refugees and arrested five traffickers along the highway from Hungary where the abandoned truck was found near the Hungarian border.
Interior ministry official Konrad Kogler denied the clampdown, which includes increased checks on the eastern borders, violated the Schengen accord on free movement.
“These are not border controls,” said Kogler. “It is about ensuring that people are safe, that they are not dying, on the one hand, and about traffic security, on the other.”
At Munich, in southern Germany, police said around 400 displaced people had arrived on a train from Hungary via Austria.
“There are advanced reports that at least one or two further trains … are coming which could have a total of three, four or five hundred refugees on board,” police official Juergen Vanselow, told Reuters TV.
Two trains arrived from Hungary at Munich station carrying several hundred mostly Syrian refugees. Men, women and children smiled with relief on reaching German soil, and police shepherded them from the platform to a station outbuilding to be registered.
They were then taken to waiting buses outside, to be transferred to a reception centre in a former barracks in the north of the city.

Brothers (left to right) Zahed, Tawab and Based Fasni from Afghanistan wait in the registry at the train station in Munich. Photograph: Matthias Balk/EPA
Eighteen-year-old Syrian Mohammad al-Azaawi said he had abandoned his engineering degree and fled the country after being wounded by a car bomb. He showed reporters scars on his stomach.
His brother Ahmed said they had paid up to 3,000 euros (US$3,365) to make their way via Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary and Austria. The family had had to sell their house to raise the money.
“We escaped death in Syria. We want to stay here for a better future,” he said.

Trains carrying migrants reach Germany as EU asylum checks are waived | World news | The Guardian

Migrants trudge through Balkans in 'dramatic' challenge to Europe

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Efstathiadis) — Wed, 26 Aug 2015 10:15:00 +0000

MARKO DJURICA

Long lines of migrants, many of them refugees from Syria, snaked through southern Serbia by foot on Monday before jumping on trains and buses north to Hungary and the last leg of an increasingly desperate journey to western Europe.

State authorities and aid agencies threw up tents and scrambled to supply food and water to thousands surging through the western Balkans, their numbers swelling since Greece began ferrying migrants from overwhelmed islands to the mainland.

Visiting the border between Greece and Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz said the situation in the Balkans was "dramatic".

"We urgently need coordinated action across Europe," he told ORF radio.

In Serbia, Red Cross official Ahmet Halimi said 8,000 migrants had registered in the southern town of Presevo over the past 24 hours.

Many had spent three desperate days on Greece's northern border after FYROM halted their passage saying it could take no more. But on Saturday, crowds braved batons and stun grenades to storm through police lines.

Helpless to stem the tide, FYROM rushed trains and buses to the border to carry them north, where they crossed into Serbia on foot.

More arrived on Monday, walking from the border crossing of Miratovac some 5 km (3 miles) to a reception centre in Presevo, where many received medical aid, food and papers legalizing their transit through the country.

Most carried their belongings in rucksacks. Men carried small children on their shoulders, hats shielding their heads from the August sun. After a chilly night, daytime temperatures were expected to near 30 degrees Celsius (86°F).

"I just want to cross to continue my journey," said Ahmed, from Syria, on the Serbian border. "My final destination is Germany, hopefully."

Not since the wars of Yugoslavia's collapse in the 1990s has the cash-strapped western Balkans seen such large movements of people, when many Bosnians, Croats, Albanians and Serbs displaced by fighting fled for the rich countries of Europe - the likes of Germany, Austria and Sweden.

The problem threatens to get worse as EU member Hungary, part of Europe's borderless Schengen zone, races to complete a fence along its 175-km border with Serbia to keep the migrants out, threatening to create a dangerous bottleneck.

The European Union, the migrants' only destination, has struggled to formulate and implement a common policy.

Kurz criticised the Greeks, whose borders form part of the EU's external frontier, for failing to process asylum requests on Greek soil as per EU rules. A record 50,000 migrants, many of them Syrians crossing by boat from Turkey, hit Greek shores in July, straining the resources of a country going through one of the worst economic crises of modern times.

On Monday, two people drowned and five were believed missing when a dinghy carrying migrants capsized off the Greek island of Lesbos, where aid groups say 1,500 have been arriving daily for the past week.

The Greek government has chartered a car ferry to collect them from the islands and bring them to the mainland on a daily basis. It carried 2,500 people, mainly Syrians, on Monday to Athens, where buses awaited to take them north.

"It is not just a case of Greece not processing those (asylum) claims, but they are actively doing their very best to get the refugees to move on to central Europe as soon as possible," Kurz said.

"The Western Balkan countries are overrun, overwhelmed and have been left to their own devices," Austria's APA news agency quoted Kurz as saying. "We have to help them."

Germany says it expects a record 750,000 asylum-seekers to arrive this year, in a crisis overwhelming authorities in Europe from the Greek islands to the French port of Calais.

Fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, many have undertaken dangerous journeys across sea and land in search of safety and employment in the affluent nations of western and northern Europe.

The UNHCR urged the EU to do more. The problem, said UNHCR Europe Bureau Director Vincent Cochetel, "will not go away any time soon and affects all of Europe."

In the past two weeks, over 23,000 have entered Serbia, taking the total so far this year to some 90,000.

[Reuters]

Migrants trudge through Balkans in 'dramatic' challenge to Europe

| News | ekathimerini.com

Why is EU struggling with migrants and asylum?

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Efstathiadis) — Tue, 25 Aug 2015 06:30:00 +0000

By Laurence Peter BBC News 19 August 2015 From the section Europe

Italy has brought thousands of rescued migrants to Sicily
Migrant tragedy

Migrants: What can Europe achieve? 16 June 2015

Are more people on the move? 28 May 2015

In depth report 22 April 2015

The Med's migrant survivors 23 April 2015

Some 2,000 migrants have drowned in the Mediterranean this year, amid a surge in overcrowded boats heading for the coasts of Greece and Italy.
The flow of desperate migrants from Syria and North Africa hoping to reach Europe is already much higher than in the same period in 2014.
Germany, which receives by far the most asylum applications in the EU, is expecting 800,000 refugees to arrive this year.

How big is the migration challenge affecting Europe now?

The number of migrants reaching Europe by boat has risen dramatically this year, compared with the same period in 2014. The number arriving in Greece, in particular, has soared.
The EU's border agency said that almost 50,000 migrants had arrived on the Greek islands in July alone, most of them Syrians.
The number of migrants reaching Greece by sea had reached 158,000 by mid-August, according to the UN, overtaking the 90,000 who arrived in Italy by sea.
The majority heading for Greece via the eastern Mediterranean route take the relatively short voyage from the Turkish mainland to the islands of Kos, Chios, Lesvos and Samos.
Fifty thousand people arrived on the shores of the Greek islands in July
The voyage from Libya to Italy is longer and more hazardous.
Migrant deaths at sea this year passed 2,000 in August, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported. And of those, 1,930 died trying to reach Italy.
A shipwreck off Italy's Lampedusa island on 19 April took an estimated 800 lives.
So, more migrants - Syrians especially - are trying to reach Greece now, instead of risking the Libya route.
Since the beginning of the year some 340,000 migrants have been detected at Europe's external borders, Frontex says.
That compares with 123,500 in the same period last year.

One of the biggest surges happened on 6-7 June, when nearly 6,000 people were plucked from the sea and taken to southern Italy, in a major international operation.
Survivors often report violence and abuse by people traffickers. Many migrants pay thousands of dollars each to the traffickers, and robbery of migrants is also common.
Record numbers have been arriving on Kos and Lesvos, packed on to flimsy rubber dinghies or small wooden boats, putting a huge strain on local resources.

Mainland Greece remains a major transit point - many migrants travel up through the Balkans, hoping to reach northern Europe.
Another pressure point is Hungary. In July alone, 34,000 migrants were detected trying to cross from Serbia into Hungary.
Faced with that influx, Hungary has urged its EU partners not to send back migrants who have travelled on from Hungary. And it plans to fence off the whole border with Serbia.

Where do they come from?

The largest migrant group by nationality in 2015 is Syrians - followed by Afghans. Then come migrants from Eritrea, Nigeria and Somalia.
The vicious civil war in Syria has triggered a huge exodus. Afghans, Eritreans and other nationalities are also fleeing poverty and human rights abuses.
In Italy new migrants from Eritrea form the biggest group, followed by those from Nigeria.
But in Greece migrants from Syria are the biggest group, then Afghans, the IOM says.
Last year, some 219,000 refugees and other migrants crossed the Mediterranean, and at least 3,500 lives were lost, the UNHCR reports. In 2013 the total reaching Europe via the Mediterranean was much lower - about 60,000.
Back in 2011 the big challenge was thousands of Tunisians arriving on Lampedusa. Far fewer Tunisians are making the voyage now, but Lampedusa remains a migrant bottleneck.
Data from Frontex records detections of illegal entries - it does not include the many migrants who manage to get in undetected.

What is the EU doing about it?

In November 2014 Italy ended its search-and-rescue mission, called Mare Nostrum. It was replaced by a cheaper and more limited EU operation called Triton, focused on patrolling within 30 nautical miles of the Italian coast.
Aid organisations say the scaling down of the rescue effort has put more migrants' lives at risk.
After much argument EU leaders agreed to triple funding for Triton, to some €120m (£86m) - taking it back to the spending levels of Italy's Mare Nostrum.
In April EU leaders pledged to beef up maritime patrols in the Mediterranean, disrupt people trafficking networks and capture and destroy boats before migrants board them.
However, any military action would have to conform with international law. The chaos in war-torn Libya remains a huge problem.
Championing the rights of poor migrants is difficult as the economic climate is still gloomy, many Europeans are unemployed and wary of foreign workers, and EU countries are divided over how to share the refugee burden.

Why is Libya such a problem in the current crisis?
Fighting continues to rage between militias in Libya
Two rival governments are battling for control of Libya, and so-called Islamic State militants have entered the country too.
The chaos has given people traffickers freedom to exploit migrants, with inadequate intervention from the authorities.
The EU and UN hope that a political agreement can be brokered to bring some stability to Libya, but so far there are few signs of progress.
There is great reluctance to send in any European military force.

What has caused migrant numbers to rise?

The wars raging in Syria and Iraq are clearly big drivers of migration to Europe. Syria's Middle Eastern neighbours have taken in some three million refugees, while millions more are displaced inside Syria.
But many migrants also continue to make hazardous journeys from the Horn of Africa, often treated brutally by people traffickers and enduring desert heat and unrest in Libya, the main point of departure.
War has ravaged Somalia and Italian officials believe many of the migrants are genuine asylum seekers, fleeing persecution. In the case of Eritrea, it appears many are young men fleeing compulsory military service, which has been likened to slavery. Eritrea is blighted by political repression, human rights groups say.
Many Afghans continue to flee poverty and persecution in their country, as attacks by Taliban insurgents and criminal gangs remain widespread.

Are EU countries sharing the burden?
Rosarno, southern Italy: One of many migrant camps set up to handle the emergency
For years the EU has been struggling to harmonise asylum policy. That is difficult with 28 member states, each with their own police force and judiciary.
More detailed joint rules have been brought in with the Common European Asylum System - but rules are one thing, putting them into practice EU-wide is another challenge.
The Dublin Regulation is a core principle for handling asylum claims in the EU. It says responsibility for examining the claim lies primarily with the member state which played the greatest part in the applicant's entry or residence in the EU. Often that is the first EU country that the migrant reached - but not always, as in many cases migrants want to be reunited with family members, for example in the UK or the Netherlands.
There are tensions in the EU over the Dublin Regulation - Greece complained that it was inundated with applications, as so many migrants arrived in Greece first. Finland and Germany are among several countries that have stopped sending migrants back to Greece.
EU governments argued over a proposal to spread the burden of housing migrants, under a quota system. Eventually they agreed to take 32,500 asylum seekers from Syria and Eritrea over the next two years - that is, genuine refugees. But the original target was 40,000.
Another 20,000 refugees currently in UNHCR camps would also be transferred to the EU, but the details have not been decided.

What about EU migrants?

It is important to remember that huge numbers of EU citizens move from one EU country to another freely. They are also described as "migrants", but they are fully protected by EU law, unless they are fugitive criminals. Their status is quite different from that of non-EU migrants. In some EU countries, including the UK, they have become an issue because of pressure on social services and competition for jobs.
Most EU countries are in the Schengen zone, which has made it much easier to cross borders without having to show a passport or other papers.

How do migrants get asylum status in the EU?

They have to satisfy the authorities that they are fleeing persecution and would face harm or even death if sent back to their country of origin.
The ban on mass "push-backs" - also known as "non-refoulement" - is an EU principle. In some cases it has not been respected, however. Greece, overburdened with asylum seekers, has been accused of refusing to let in some groups of migrants.
Under EU rules, an asylum seeker has the right to food, first aid and shelter in a reception centre. They should get an individual assessment of their needs. They may be granted asylum by the authorities at "first instance". If unsuccessful they can appeal against the decision in court, and may win.
Asylum seekers are supposed to be granted the right to a job within nine months of arrival.

The number of asylum claims in the EU rose to 626,065 in 2014, up from 435,190 in 2013, the European Commission reports. The 2014 figure is the highest since a peak in 1992, though back then the EU had fewer member states.
In 2014 the number of applicants from Syria more than doubled compared with 2013, reaching 123,000. That was 20% of the total, and far above the next biggest group - Afghans, who accounted for 7%.
Migrants from Kosovo were in third place, just above Eritreans. Poor, marginalised Roma account for many of the migrants from Kosovo.
In 2014 asylum was granted to 163,000 people in first instance decisions - that is, nearly 45% of such decisions. Germany granted the most - 41,000 - followed by Sweden (31,000) and Italy (21,000).

Why is EU struggling with migrants and asylum? - BBC News

Europe migrant crisis: Macedonia allows all 1,500 refugees at border to enter from Greece; 2,200 rescued off Italy

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Efstathiadis) — Sun, 23 Aug 2015 06:50:00 +0000

More than 1,500 mostly Syrian refugees, trapped in no-man's land for three days, have entered Macedonia from Greece without any attempt by the police to stop them.
Photo: The migrants had been trapped between the Greek-Macedonian border for three days. (Reuters: Alexandros Avramidis)
Related Story: Macedonian police fire tear gas, stun grenades after migrants rush border
Related Story: Italy moves to rescue 3,000 migrants from waters off Libyan coast
Related Story: France, Britain to set up crisis centre as migrant pressure mounts
Map: Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic Of
Key points

More than 1,500 refugees entered Macedonia after being trapped between Greek-Macedonian border
Police said no more would be allowed to enter until current group moves north
Italy's coastguard rescued about 2,200 migrants in the Mediterranean

Macedonian police had earlier used stun grenades and batons in a bid to stop hundreds of refugees breaking through barbed wire fencing on its southern border with Greece, but on Saturday evening they allowed all the migrants into the country.
Police officers were seen guarding the frontier but not a single person remained in the strip of land between the Greek-Macedonian border where more than 2,000 people, including women and children, had been stuck since Thursday.
The migrants hope to cross into Serbia in the north and eventually start a new life in the European Union.
Macedonian police spokesman Ivo Kotevski said police did not want to use force to stop the migrants and refugees, but would continue to control the flow of new arrivals.
"We will continue with reinforced control of the border according to the state of emergency and we will [in future] allow only a limited number of people into the country in accordance with the capacities we have," Kotevski said.
He said no new people would be allowed to enter until the current group had moved on towards the north "or we will have a humanitarian crisis in Macedonia".
Thousands of refugees and migrants, mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, are expected to arrive in the country in the coming days after being ferried to the Greek mainland from the islands.
Authorities deny being heavy-handed

On Thursday, Macedonia declared a state of emergency and sealed its border in a bid to stop the influx, after news several hundred would be let through every few hours reached those on the border and a crush formed after the first group streamed through.
Macedonians officers twice resorted to force to try to prevent people from entering the country and at least a dozen were hurt in the brief flare-up.
Amnesty International said it spoke to some refugees who gave accounts of police beatings and shots being fired in the air but authorities denied being heavy-handed.
Events on Thursday and Friday saw Macedonia become the latest flashpoint of a crisis that has dragged the conflicts of the Middle East — most notably Syria — to Europe's doorstep.
Macedonia said it had registered more than 40,000 migrants and refugees entering from Greece in the past two months.
Most move quickly through the country to Serbia and then walk into Hungary and on to the more affluent countries of western and northern Europe through the borderless Schengen Area.
Photo: No new refugees will be allowed to enter Macedonia until the current group has moved north. (Reuters: Ognen Teofilovski)
Another 2,200 migrants rescued off Italy

The Italian coastguard has coordinated the rescue of 2,200 migrants in the Mediterranean after receiving distress calls from more than 20 overcrowded vessels drifting in waters off Libya in one of the biggest single-day rescue operations to date.
The operation was ongoing as nightfall approached on Saturday, and it was unclear how many people remained in danger.
Initial estimates put the total number of people on board the stricken ships at up to 3,000.

This must a joke. We are using our own forces to do the people smugglers' business for them and ensure we are invaded.
Maurizio Gasparri, Forza Italia senator

Two navy ships, the Cigala Fulgosi and the Vega, picked up 507 and 432 migrants respectively from two wooden boats in danger of sinking just off Libya, the navy said.
The coastguard said its patrol boats had safely boarded just under 300 people from three different inflatable dinghies.
Another 1,003 rescued migrants and refugees were reported to be headed for Italian ports on other boats, as the wave of new arrivals triggered increasingly virulent attacks on Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's handling of the migration crisis.
"This must a joke. We are using our own forces to do the people smugglers' business for them and ensure we are invaded," said Maurizio Gasparri, a senator for Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right Forza Italia party.
Leader of the anti-immigration Northern League party Matteo Salvini called on the government to park the migrants on disused Italian oil rigs off Libya.
"Help them, rescue them and take care of them: but don't let them land here," he wrote on his Facebook page.
The rescued migrants included a batch of 311, including a newborn baby, who were on a boat belonging to humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, which is expected to dock in Vibo Valentia in Calabria, port authorities said.
A further 370 had been picked up by the Italian customs police and were headed for Messina in Sicily while some 322, Italian media said, were on the Norwegian boat Siem Pilot, part of the European Union's Triton mission.
Photo: More than 104,000 migrants and refugees have landed in Italy this year after being rescued in the Mediterranean. (Reuters: Antonio Parrinello)
Passengers locked below deck on overcrowded vessel

More than 170,000 migrants and refugees from Africa, the Middle East and South Asia landed at Italy's southern ports in 2014 after being rescued in the Mediterranean, while the total for 2015 has already topped 104,000.
A further 135,000-plus have landed in Greece since January and more than 2,300 people have died at sea while trying to make it to Europe with the help of traffickers.
Police in Palermo, Sicily, announced on Saturday that they had arrested six Egyptian nationals on suspicion of people smuggling following the rescue of a stricken boat on August 19.
Testimony from the 432 migrants on board suggested the vessel had been packed with more than ten times the number of people it was designed for, with many of the passengers, including a number of women and children, locked below decks.
They had each paid the traffickers 2,000 euros ($AU3,100) for the passage from Egypt to Italy, according to statements given to police.
On board, the crew were reported to have demanded further payment to allow those locked in the hold to come up temporarily for air.
Humanitarian organisations said the surge in the numbers of people trying to reach European Union countries was the result of conflicts and repression in Africa and the Middle East.
They have called on European governments to shoulder more of the burden of absorbing the wave of asylum seekers and to help create safer routes for them to reach Europe.
AFP

Europe migrant crisis: Macedonia allows all 1,500 refugees at border to enter from Greece; 2,200 rescued off Italy - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Russian president Vladimir Putin dives in mini-sub to shipwreck off Crimea

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Efstathiadis) — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 04:32:00 +0000

ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Photo: Russian president Vladimir Putin submerges on board a mini-submarine into the waters of the Black Sea to explore a shipwreck. (AFP: Ria Novosti/Alexei Nikolsky)
Related Story: Russia destroys hundreds of tonnes of Western food as embargo bites
Related Story: Ukraine clashes kill 10 as fears grow of broader fighting
Map: Russian Federation
Russian president Vladimir Putin has burnished his action-man image by diving in a mini-submarine to explore a shipwreck off the coast of the Crimea peninsula that Moscow seized from Ukraine last year.
Mr Putin plunged to a depth of 83 metres seated alongside the pilot in the glass-bubble cabin of the Dutch-made vessel.
"83 metres is a pretty substantial depth," Mr Putin said in televised comments after the dive. "It was interesting."
He went underwater to view the Byzantine-era wreckage in the Black Sea off Crimea that included a trove of 10th century pottery.
Video: Vladimir Putin takes a submarine ride in the Black Sea during Crimea trip (Storyful)
The remains were discovered off the coast of Sevastopol by Russian divers earlier this year.
"It is a galleon that was transporting civilian cargo through the bay of Balaclava," Mr Putin said.
"It is still to be investigated by experts. I have to say that there are not that many similar remains like this in the north of the Black Sea."
Mr Putin has become known for his eye-catching stunts during his fifteen years in charge of Russia, that have included flying with cranes, riding topless on horseback and darting an endangered tiger.
In 2009 he dove down around 1,400 metres to the bottom of the world's deepest lake, Lake Baikal, in another mini-submarine.
Mr Putin also hopped into another miniature submersible in 2013 to take in a 19th century naval frigate shipwreck on the bed of the Baltic Sea.
Photo: Russian president Vladimir Putin (C) listens to prime minister Dmitry Medvedev (L) after submerging into the waters of the Black Sea inside a research bathyscaphe as part of an expedition near Sevastopol, Crimea, August 18, 2015. (Reuters: Kremlin/RIA Novosti/Alexei Nikolsky)
The carefully choreographed photo opportunities are designed to buff up the image of the judo black belt president among ordinary Russians.
Mr Putin's popularity has reached an all-time high in recent months of just under 90 per cent as Russia's slavish state-run media has gone into overdrive to promote him since the seizure of Crimea in February 2014.
Not all of Mr Putin's eye-catching adventures have, however, been unmitigated successes.
A stunt in 2011 that saw a wet suited Mr Putin apparently find two ancient amphorae during a dive off the Russian coast close to Crimea drew widespread derision after it turned out the urns had been deliberately placed there.
Mr Putin is in the middle of his third visit to Crimea since he ordered out thousands of special forces troops to take control of the peninsula in 2014.
Ukraine's president Petro Poroshenko on Monday lashed out over the trip saying it would "escalate" a 16-month separatist conflict in east Ukraine that Kiev accuses Moscow of masterminding.
Mr Putin, however, batted away the criticism over his visit and insisted the "blame" for a recent spike in violence in east Ukraine lay with the government forces.
During his visit to Crimea Mr Putin has held high-level meetings to discuss the region's abysmal economic record under Moscow rule, which even led the local governor to ask the Russian president to allow Ukrainians to work in the service industry.
The region is under tough Western sanctions that have seen its banking system hit and foreign firms pull out.
Tourism, a mainstay of the region's economy, has also plummeted.
Meanwhile, the leaders of France, Germany and Ukraine are to meet in Berlin on Monday in a bid to bring an end to a new wave of violence in Ukraine, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius said.
AFP
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Europe migrant crisis: Number of migrants at EU borders in July triple last year's figure, Frontex says

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Efstathiadis) — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 04:19:00 +0000

ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Wednesday 19 August 2015

Photo: Syrian refugees arrive on a dinghy at the Greek island of Kos after crossing a part of the Aegean sea from Turkey. (Reuters: Alkis Konstantinidis)
Related Story: At least 40 migrants suffocate in boat hold in Mediterranean
Related Story: Greece sends cruise liner, extra riot police to Kos as tensions mount over migrants
Related Story: UK announces new plans to deter illegal immigrants in response to Calais crisis
Map: European Union
More than three times as many migrants were tracked entering the European Union by irregular means in July compared to the same month last year, official data shows.
EU border agency Frontex said a record 107,500 migrants reached the EU's borders last month, as the 28-member bloc struggles to cope with a refugee crisis.
"The figure was the third consecutive monthly record, jumping well past the previous high of more than 70,000 reached in June," the Warsaw-based agency said in a statement.
The July figure comes days after EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said the world faced its "worst refugee crisis since World War II".

This is an emergency situation for Europe.
^{Frontex director, Fabrice Leggeri}

While the increase recorded by Frontex may be partly due to better monitoring, it highlighted the scale of a crisis that has led to more than 2,000 deaths this year as desperate migrants take to rickety boats.
The EU has approved 2.4 billion euros ($6.7 billion) of funding to help member states cope with the flood of migrants — many of them Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans fleeing instability at home.
The number of migrants reaching the borders was nearly 340,000 during the first seven months of the year, up from 123,500 during the same period in 2014, according to Frontex.
That was a 175 per cent rise on the same period last year and much more than the 280,000 registered arrivals in all of 2014.
"This has created an unprecedented pressure on border control authorities in Greece, Italy and Hungary," the agency said.
The July record figure includes 50,000 migrants detected in the Aegean Sea, more than 20,000 in Italy, and nearly 35,000 in the Western Balkans.
"This is an emergency situation for Europe that requires all EU member states to step in to support the national authorities who are taking on a massive number of migrants at its borders," Frontex director Fabrice Leggeri added in the statement.
"Frontex has called on member states to provide additional equipment and people to support our operations in Greece and in Hungary."
Photo: Migrants sit on a harbour after been rescued by Turkish coast guard from a sinking ship trying to reach Greece. (AFP: Bulent Kilic)
Eight suspected traffickers arrested

Meanwhile, Italian police said they had arrested eight suspected human traffickers they said had reportedly forced migrants to stay in the hold of a fishing boat in the Mediterranean as 49 of them suffocated on engine fumes.
Some of those traffickers were accused of kicking the heads of the migrants when they tried to climb out of the hold as the air became unbreathable, prosecutor Michelangelo Patane said.
The dead migrants were discovered last weekend, packed into a fishing boat also carrying 312 others trying to cross the Mediterranean to Italy from North Africa.
It was the third mass fatality in the Mediterranean this month. Last week, up to 50 migrants were unaccounted for when their rubber dinghy sank, a few days after some 200 were presumed dead when their boat capsized off Libya.
Greece appealed to its EU partners to come up with a comprehensive strategy to deal with what new data showed were 21,000 refugees landing on Greek shores last week alone.
A spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR in Geneva said the EU should help Greece but that Athens, which is struggling with a debt crisis, also needed to show "much more leadership" on the issue.
Greek officials said they needed better coordination within the EU.
"This problem cannot be solved by imposing stringent legal processes in Greece, and, certainly, not by overturning the boats," government spokeswoman Olga Gerovassili said.
Photo: Afghan immigrants land at a beach on the Greek island of Kos. (Reuters: Yannis Behrakis)
AFP/Reuters
From other news sites:

BBC: Europe migrant crisis: Surge in numbers at EU borders
Reuters: EU migrant arrivals pass record 100,000 in July: border agency
The Guardian: Germany to receive 750,000 asylum seekers this year, reports claim
Yahoo!7 News: France, Britain to sign cooperation deal on migrant crisis

Europe migrant crisis: Number of migrants at EU borders in July triple last year's figure, Frontex says - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

10 truths about Europe’s migrant crisis

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Efstathiadis) — Wed, 12 Aug 2015 03:12:00 +0000

Patrick Kingsley Tuesday 11 August 2015

British ministers including Theresa May and Philip Hammond have made hair-raising claims about the dangers of migrants entering the country. But do the facts bear them out?

Migrants near Calais earlier this month. Photograph: Philippe Huguen
When you’re facing the world’s biggest refugee crisis since the second world war, it helps to have a sober debate about how to respond. But to do that, you need facts and data – two things that the British migration debate has lacked this summer. Theresa May got the ball rolling in May, when she claimed on Radio 4 that the vast majority of migrants to Europe are Africans travelling for economic reasons. The media has followed suit, one example being the Daily Mail’s unsubstantiated recent assertion that seven in 10 migrants at Calais will reach the UK.
Foreign secretary Philip Hammond this week not only repeated May’s claims about African economic migrants, but portrayed them as marauders who would soon hasten the collapse of European civilisation. Hammond, like many people, could do with some actual statistics about the migration crisis. Here are 10 of the key ones:
62%

Far from being propelled by economic migrants, this crisis is mostly about refugees. The assumption by the likes of Hammond, May and others is that the majority of those trying to reach Europe are fleeing poverty, which is not considered by the international community as a good enough reason to move to another country. Whereas in fact, by the end of July, 62% of those who had reached Europe by boat this year were from Syria, Eritrea and Afghanistan, according to figures compiled by the UN. These are countries torn apart by war, dictatorial oppression, and religious extremism – and, in Syria’s case, all three. Their citizens almost always have the legal right to refuge in Europe. And if you add to the mix those coming from Darfur, Iraq, Somalia, and some parts of Nigeria – then the total proportion of migrants likely to qualify for asylum rises to well over 70%.

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1%

If you read the British press, you’d think that Calais was the major battleground of the European migrant crisis, and that Britain was the holy grail of its protagonists. In reality, the migrants at Calais account for as little as 1% of those who have arrived in Europe so far this year. Estimates suggest that between 2,000-5,000 migrants have reached Calais, which is between 1% and 2.5% of the more than 200,000 who have landed in Italy and Greece. Just as importantly, there is no evidence to suggest that as many as seven in 10 have reached Britain after arriving in Calais. The Daily Mail admitted this several paragraphs into its article.
0.027%

Hammond said that the migrants would speed the collapse of the European social order. In reality, the number of migrants to have arrived so far this year (200,000) is so minuscule that it constitutes just 0.027% of Europe’s total population of 740 million. The world’s wealthiest continent can easily handle such a comparatively small influx.

A young Syrian refugee in the Greek island of Kos. Photograph: YANNIS BEHRAKIS/REUTERS
1.2 million

There are countries with social infrastructure at breaking point because of the refugee crisis – but they aren’t in Europe. The most obvious example is Lebanon, which houses 1.2 million Syrian refugees within a total population of roughly 4.5 million. To put that in context, a country that is more than 100 times smaller than the EU has already taken in more than 50 times as many refugees as the EU will even consider resettling in the future. Lebanon has a refugee crisis. Europe – and, in particular, Britain – does not.
£36.95

Many claim that Britain is a coveted destination for migrants because of its generous benefits system. Aside from the reality that most migrants have little prior knowledge of the exact nature of each European country’s asylum system, it is not true that the UK is particularly beneficent. Each asylum seeker in Britain gets a meagre £36.95 to live on (and they are not usually allowed to work to supplement this sum). In France, whose policies are supposedly driving up the numbers at Calais, migrants actually receive substantially more. According to the Asylum Information Database, asylum seekers in France receive up to £56.62 a week. Germany and Sweden – the two most popular migrant destinations – pay out £35.21 and £36.84 a week respectively, only fractionally less than Britain.
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50%

In the dog-whistle rhetoric of Hammond and Theresa May, the archetypal contemporary migrant in Europe is from Africa. But again, that’s not true. This year, according to UN figures, 50% alone are from two non-African countries: Syria (38%) and Afghanistan (12%). When migrants from Pakistan, Iraq and Iran are added into the equation, it becomes clear that the number of African migrants is significantly less than half. Even so, as discussed above, many of them – especially those from Eritrea, Darfur, and Somalia – have legitimate claims to refugee status.

Royal Marines with migrants rescued off the Libyan coast in June. Photograph: Rowan Griffiths/Daily Mirror/PA
4%

Last autumn, the EU opted to suspend full-scale maritime rescue operations in the Mediterranean in the belief that their presence was encouraging more migrants to risk the sea journey from Libya to Europe. In reality, people kept on coming. In fact, there was a 4% year-on-year increase during the months that the rescue missions were on hiatus. Over 27,800 tried the journey in 2015, or died in the attempt, until operations were reinstated in May, according to figures from the International Organisation for Migration. Only 26,740 tried it in 2014. The disparity suggests that migrants were either unaware of the rescue operations in the first place, or simply unbothered by their suspension – a thesis borne out by my own interviews. “I don’t think that even if they decided to bomb migrant boats it would change peoples’ decision to go,” said Abu Jana, a Syrian I met as he was planning to make the sea voyage earlier this year.
25,870

Contrary to the perception of the UK as the high altar of immigration, it is not a particularly major magnet for refugees. In 2014, just 25,870 people sought asylum in the UK, and only 10,050 were accepted. Germany (97275), France (68500), Sweden (39,905) and Italy (35,180) were all far more affected. When the ratings are calculated as a proportion to population size, the UK slips even further down the table – behind Belgium, Holland and Austria. If the ratings were calculated on 2015 rates, then even impoverished Greece would rise above the UK in the table. Just as tellingly, the UK has welcomed just 187 Syrians through legal mechanisms at the last count. Turkey has around 1.6 million.
€11bn

Hammond and David Cameron argue that the solution to migration is to increase deportations. They believe this will save Britain money, as less cash will be spent on paying each asylum seeker £36.95 per week. However, this strategy ignores the cost of deportations – whose alleged financial cost could rival that of the asylum seekers’ benefits bill. According to a series of investigations by the website The Migrant Files, as many as €11bn have been spent on repatriating migrants to their countries of origin since 2000. A further billion has been blown on Europe-wide coordination efforts to secure European borders – money that could have been spent on integrating migrants into European society.
-76,439

Despite the hysteria, the number of refugees in the UK has actually fallen by 76,439 since 2011. That’s according to Britain’s Refugee Council, which crunched the numbers gleaned from UN data and found that the number of refugees in the UK fell from 193,600 to 117,161 in the past four years. By comparison, the proportion of refugees housed by developing countries in the past 10 years has risen, according to the UN, from 70% to 86%. Britain could be doing far more.

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10 truths about Europe’s migrant crisis | UK news | The Guardian