Free Republic

Hungary's right-wing government shut the main land route for migrants into the EU on Tuesday, taking matters into its own hands to halt Europe's influx of refugees. An emergency effort led by Germany to force European Union member states to accept mandatory quotas of refugees collapsed in discord. Berlin called for EU financial penalties against countries that refused to accommodate their share of migrants. A Czech official said such threats were empty but nonetheless "damaging". Slovakia said they would bring the "end of the EU". Under new rules that took effect from midnight, Hungary said anyone seeking asylum at its...

GUVECCI, Turkey—A little past midnight in this dusty border town, the only sounds other than crickets were smugglers herding newly arrived refugees into minibuses bound for a nearby city. A slender woman from the Sahel al-Ghab region in northwestern Syria, where fighting between rebels and government forces has raged in recent weeks, is among the first of several waves of exhausted refugees to reach Guvecci on this September night. She said she and her husband paid a smuggler $130 to be led on a 15-minute dash by foot across the border. The danger of getting caught before the minibus reached...

Fri Sep 11, 2015 8:30am EDT UPDATE 1-Orban: Hungary will arrest "rebellious" migrants Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban warned on Friday that his police would take tougher action from next week against a wave of migrants who he said had rebelled against authorities, seized railway stations and refused to be registered. Hungary, a key transit country for migrants and refugees trying to reach richer and more generous European Union countries such as Germany and Sweden, is racing to construct a fence along its border with Serbia by early October to stem the flow. More than 170,000 migrants have crossed into...

The Hungarian governing party, Fidesz, has been convinced that one of the roots of terrorism can be found in immigration. “The European Union is incapable of protecting its member states, and for this reason these states, including Hungary, must protect themselves,” Antal Rogán said commenting on the Paris terror attack, where 16 people were killed, earlier in January. Indeed, the Hungarian government’s anti-immigration rhetoric seems to have started – or at least intensified – after the terrible massacre in France. Since then, the Hungarian premier as well as other government officials have been advocating that immigration policy must be transformed...

"Because of the massive overcrowding of trains coming from Hungary, ÖBB has to suspend train services to Hungary temporarily," the company said in a statement. The suspension covers both Railjet intercity trains between Vienna and Budapest and regional cross-border services, it said. It also called on volunteers and bus companies to stop bringing people to train stations. "The flow (of people)... and the large numbers of people waiting at stations to travel onwards has outstripped available capacities since this morning," ÖBB said. The announcement came after 3,700 people crossed the border on foot from Hungary overnight, many of whom were...

According to index.hu, authorities will have a totally different attitude towards refugees from next Tuesday. Those who enter illegally, will be caught, prisoned and quickly expelled from the country. Those who submit an asylum application will not be able to enter Hungary and will be sent back to Serbia. The government prepares for crowd control scenes too, but according to Orban’s plans, that is the only way that there will be relatively calm for Christmas. Read more at: http://dailynewshungary.com/hungary-will-stop-immigrants-with-brutal-laws-in-a-few-days/

Austrian railway company OeBB said on Thursday it had suspended all train traffic heading to Hungary due to "massive overburdening" after days during which thousands of migrants have transited the two countries on their way to Germany. "The OeBB must temporarily suspend trains heading to Hungary because of massive overburdening from trains arriving from Hungary,"

Hungarian Camerawoman Fired for Kicking, Tripping Migrants N1TV said employee dismissed because she ‘behaved unacceptably’ Associated Press Sept. 9, 2015 7:41 a.m. ET 1 COMMENTS BUDAPEST—A Hungarian camerawoman has been fired after she was caught on video kicking and tripping migrants entering Hungary across the border with Serbia. The N1TV Internet channel said their employee, widely identified in Hungarian media as Petra Laszlo, has been dismissed because she “behaved unacceptably” at a makeshift gathering point where police take migrants immediately after they enter Hungary near the village of Roszke. In videos posted online, Laszlo can be seen kicking at least...

Video taken on September 4, 2015 at the Budapest Keleti railway station... Islamic Immigrants chanting F*** You and Allu Akbar in Budapest

Hungary's prime minister says he wants to speed up construction of a fence meant to stop migrants on the southern border with Serbia - project which has missed two previous deadlines. Viktor Orban was quoted Tuesday's edition of the pro-government Magyar Idok (Hungarian Times) daily newspaper as saying that he was persuaded of the need for more workers on the project after an unannounced inspection of the barrier on Monday with his chief of staff, Janos Lazar. Hungary initially said that a 4-meter (13-feet) high fence would be built on the 174-kilometer (109-mile) border with Serbia by the end of...

Hundreds of migrants have broken through police lines on Hungary's border with Serbia and are walking towards to capital, Budapest. The migrants has earlier broken out of a registration camp at Roszke. About 300 are on a motorway, escorted by police. Some later reportedly agreed to be bussed to a reception centre. Earlier, German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that the 'breathtaking' flow of migrants into Germany would change the county in the coming years. Hungary has become a flashpoint as thousands of migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa move north to claim asylum in Germany and other...

Struggling to cope with a record influx of asylum seekers, Germany told its European partners on Monday they must take in more refugees too, saying the burden could not fall on just a few countries. Chancellor Angela Merkel, speaking after a weekend in which some 20,000 migrants made their way to Germany from Hungary by train, bus and on foot, described the events of the past days as "breathtaking" and tried to reassure German citizens that the crisis was manageable.

Heidelberg - As German makes provisions to accept 800,000 refugees this year, the nation is split vertically on the crisis with refugee shelters attacked with Molotov cocktails and swastika signs painted outside many refugee homes. Rashme Sehgal reports for Rediff.com from Heidelberg on how Europe's refugee crisis is playing out in Germany. As Germans get ready to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the unification of East and Eest Germany in October, the refugee influx into the country could well see its social fabric being ripped apart with Germans living in the east and west taking opposing views on this controversial...

Even as the exhausted spokesperson from the prime minister’s office said on Saturday that the government wouldn’t repeat Friday’s bussing, thousands more refugees already marching from Budapest as police cordoned off the roads for them.

BUDAPEST, Hungary (Sept. 6) – The human flood tide surging into Europe from its southern Mediterranean shores is only beginning. Hungary’s Prime Minister Victor Orban has warned that ‘uncountable millions’ of migrants from the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa are on the way and the EU should get ready to meet the crisis sooner rather than later.

In Budapest, almost emptied of refugees the night before, the main railway station was again filling up with new arrivals, but trains to western Europe remained cancelled. So hundreds set off by foot, saying they would walk to the Austrian border, 110 miles away, like others had tried on Friday. After days of confrontation and chaos, Hungary’s government deployed more than 100 buses overnight to take thousands to the Austrian frontier. Austria said it had agreed with Germany to allow them access, waiving asylum rules that require them to register in the first EU state they reach. Hungary insisted the...

About 60 German universities in Germany are providing free university education to the growing population of refugees who are seeking asylum in the country, German newspaper Handelsblatt reports.Some universities are offering language tuition, have waived semester fees, provide free student passes for public transport, and give access to hardship and grant funds, according to survey done last month by the German Rectors’ Conference, a voluntary association of state universities.“Migration is a task for all of society, and universities must do their part,” University of Hildesheim president Wolfgang-Uwe Friedrich explained to Handelsblatt on why he set up the program. The Washington...

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.

An unlikely leader has emerged in Europe to represent those who oppose the European Union’s moves to accept a growing deluge of African and Middle Eastern migrants into the continent: the prime minister of tiny Hungary.Viktor Orban, the head of Hungary’s conservative Fidesz party, is very publicly defying European Union officials who have called upon the continent to accept a wave of hundreds of thousands of migrants from countries like Syria, Libya, and South Sudan.In a Thursday speech in Brussels, where the European Parliament is based, Orban pointed out that many migrants currently reaching Europe are hardly coming straight from...

As the situation in Syria and Iraq continues to deteriorate, residents have been fleeing the area in droves. This has led to a serious refugee crisis everywhere they go, as well as raising uncomfortable questions about what the obligations of the various nations in the area might be in terms of taking care of them. Hungary has been getting a lot of heat over the response of their Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, who is being described by the international media as well as other leaders in the neighborhood in less than charitable terms. (BBC) There is sympathy in Brussels for...