London: Tens of thousands of Europeans hit the streets yesterday to show solidarity with huge numbers of refugees entering the continent, as Hungary’s premier warned leaders were “in a dream world” about the dangers posed by the influx.
In London, one of dozens of events across Europe, tens of thousands demonstrated, brandishing placards reading “Open the Borders”, witnesses said, while in Copenhagen, some 30,000 took to the streets. “I want to support the refugees,” said Deborah Flatley in London, holding a homemade cardboard sign reading: “We admire your bravery. You deserve a safe and happy life. We welcome you here with open arms”.
In Berlin, demonstrators waved a Syrian flag with “Refugees Welcome” written on it, while rallies in Stockholm, Helsinki and Lisbon each attracted around 1,000 people, including at a picnic in the Finnish capital.
But highlighting how the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants has divided the European Union, there were counter-demonstrations in eastern members of the bloc. “We’re here so that the government hears our voice and abandons any plans to welcome Muslims,” the organiser of one such protest in Warsaw told a crowd of around 5,000 people chanting anti-Islam slogans.
The influx has exposed deep rifts with the EU, with “frontline” states Italy, Greece and Hungary struggling and European Commission proposals for sharing 160,000 of the new arrivals in a quota scheme facing resistance among eastern members.
Germany has absorbed the lion’s share so far, taking in 450,000 people. Hungaryian Prime Minister Viktor Orban launched a broadside, saying Europe’s leaders are “living in a dream world” with “no clue” about the dangers and scale of the problem, while denying that the migrants are refugees. Orban said he would propose to his EU counterparts that the bloc provides ¤3bn ($3.4bn) to Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, “and more if necessary — until the flow of migrants is stopped”.
Thousands more were, meanwhile, travelling up from Greece through the Balkans. New figures showed that 3,023 people entered Hungary on Friday. Around 2,000 migrants were at Budapest’s Keleti train station, with 300-500 boarding trains to near the Austrian border. Some 7,200 people arrived in the southern German city of Munich, with officials expecting 2,000 more. Germany has placed 4,000 troops on standby. Munich’s authorities say they are running out of places for the migrants to sleep.
Four children missing
Meanwhile, four children have gone missing after a dinghy carrying them and other migrants sank off the island of Samos yesterday, a spokeswoman for the Greek coastguard authorities said. The coastguard picked up 25 survivors north east of the Aegean island. They told authorities that four minors were missing. Agencies
