This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/12/world/europe/europe-migrant-crisis.html

The article has changed 12 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 8 Version 9
Hungarian Camerawoman Petra Laszlo Apologizes for Kicking Migrants Hungary Rejects E.U. Action and Quota for Migrants
(about 4 hours later)
LONDON — Petra Laszlo, the Hungarian camerawoman who was fired this week after she was filmed kicking and tripping migrants, including a father carrying a child, has apologized. She said she was defending herself. BERLIN — Germany on Friday failed to persuade Hungary and three other central European partners to accept joint European Union action and a quota to distribute migrants from the Middle East.
The footage of Ms. Laszlo blithely sticking out her foot to trip a man carrying his young daughter as they ran from the police spread rapidly on social media. It led to global condemnation and transformed Ms. Laszlo, whose apology was published late Thursday, into a potent symbol of the xenophobic, even violent, response to the migrant crisis in parts of Europe. The German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, using blunt language that indicated Berlin might be losing patience, called the crisis “the greatest challenge the European Union has faced in its history.”
The foreign ministers of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia met on Friday in Prague with the foreign ministers of Germany and Luxembourg, which holds the European Union’s rotating six-month presidency. Up to 40,000 people might arrive this weekend, he said — double the total warmly welcomed in an outpouring of emotion last Saturday and Sunday. The new figures came as questions mounted about the wisdom of throwing open the borders last weekend, in a humanitarian gesture that was described as a one-time offer, but which appears to have encouraged more asylum-seekers to join the migrant trail.
The talks are intended to overcome divisions in Europe over how to address the growing migration crisis, which has prompted a call by the European Commission, the 28-nation bloc’s executive arm, for 160,000 migrants to be spread across the bloc. In an indication that the government was troubled about maintaining control, Ursula von der Leyen, Germany’s defense minister, announced that 4,000 troops were on standby — a measure more often used to preserve order in natural disasters.
The harsh response to migrants in some countries in Eastern and Central Europe has spurred debate about why many in former Communist countries, which themselves spent four decades craving liberty, are in some cases unsympathetic, and even downright hostile, to those fleeing tyranny. Mr. Steinmeier stressed that Germany now expects 800,000 migrants to arrive this year, and added, “None of these will be taken in by others, so I ask for understanding, that we discuss not only those who are already here, but a fair quota of distribution of those who are still on the way.”
Ms. Laszlo said she had been afraid when migrants broke through a police cordon at a makeshift relocation camp in Roszke, Hungary, a few hundred yards from the Serbian border, and came charging toward her. His statement during talks in Prague with Hungarian, Czech, Slovak and Polish counterparts suggested that neither he nor the foreign minister of Luxembourg, which holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, persuaded the former Communist countries, which have not been immigrant destinations, to adopt quotas to house 160,000 migrants as suggested this week by the European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker.
“I was scared as the crowd rushed toward me, and then something snapped in me,” Ms. Laszlo wrote in a letter to the conservative daily newspaper Magyar Nemzet. The Prague talks were held in anticipation of a meeting on Monday of European interior ministers to discuss the Juncker proposals, and there were indications on Friday that heads of state and government might have to hold a summit meeting if no progress is made then. Officials in Berlin, speaking on condition of anonymity as they groped for a solution, even mentioned using majority voting — and not the traditional consensus — to decide the matter.
Ms. Laszlo, who is under police investigation, said she did not deserve the recriminations that have followed. That would be highly unusual in an affair so central to Europe’s destiny.
“I’m not a heartless, racist, children-kicking camerawoman,” she wrote. “I do not deserve the political witch hunts against me, nor the smears or often the death threats. I’m just a woman, and now an unemployed mother of small children, who made a bad decision in a situation of panic. I am truly sorry.” But Mr. Steinmeier indicated that Berlin is keenly aware that failure to control the situation might tip the popular mood in Germany, and other countries like Sweden and Austria, where the welcome for the migrants has to date been warm.
Ms. Laszlo was working for an Internet television channel associated with Hungary’s far-right party Jobbik, which has railed against immigration. Frustrated at the conditions in the camp, hundreds of migrants — among them Afghans, Iraqis and Syrians — breached security lines on Tuesday. While Social Democrats like Mr. Steinmeier have long supported immigration, the conservatives in Bavaria’s Christian Social Union, Ms. Merkel’s partners in her center-right bloc, have long been critical, and have grown more so this week. “We’ve lost control,” said Hans-Peter Friedrich, a former interior minister and deputy leader of the Bavarian party, in the newspaper Passauer Neue Presse.
On Wednesday, the European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, made his plea for the European Union to take in migrants, imploring Europeans not to forget their ancestors who fled famine and hardship in search of a better life. Throwing open the borders to migrants coming from Hungary by way of Austria last weekend “was a failure that we will have to deal with for a long time,” said Horst Seehofer, head of the Bavarian party and governor of that state. “I don’t see how we will put the cork back in the bottle,” he was quoted as telling Der Spiegel magazine.
But his call was met with deep resistance in countries like the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, which fear that a large influx of migrants will undermine their quality of life. Mr. Steinmeier said Europe needed a common message, that “not everyone who arrives has the right to asylum, or the right to a job.” Smugglers, he said, spread such rumors “and are working on purpose to lure people into undertaking dangerous journeys.”
The harsh response to migrants in some countries in Eastern and Central Europe has spurred debate about why many in former Communist countries, which themselves spent four decades craving liberty, are in some cases unsympathetic, and even downright hostile, to those fleeing war and tyranny.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary reiterated his criticism of migrants on Friday, and he warned that his country would soon take an even harder line.Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary reiterated his criticism of migrants on Friday, and he warned that his country would soon take an even harder line.
“They have seized railway stations, refused to give fingerprints, failed to cooperate and are unwilling to go to places where they would get food, water, accommodation and medical care,” Mr. Orban said after a meeting with Manfred Weber, chairman of the conservative European People’s Party in the European Parliament. “They have rebelled against Hungarian legal order.” “They have seized railway stations, refused to give fingerprints, failed to cooperate and are unwilling to go to places where they would get food, water, accommodation and medical care,” Mr. Orban said after a meeting with Manfred Weber, chairman of the conservative European People’s Party in the European Parliament.
Tougher laws on immigration will go into effect on Tuesday, Mr. Orban said, and migrants who cross the border illegally will be arrested.Tougher laws on immigration will go into effect on Tuesday, Mr. Orban said, and migrants who cross the border illegally will be arrested.
At the meeting in Prague, resistance to distributing migrants according to a quota system remained strong, as some countries reiterated that immigration policy was a matter of national sovereignty that should not be dictated by Brussels. “Every country has to have the sovereign right to decide who it will or will not accept,” said Lubomir Zaoralek, the Czech foreign minister. At the meeting in Prague, some countries reiterated that immigration policy was a matter of national sovereignty. Lubomir Zaoralek, the Czech foreign minister, said, “Every country has to have the sovereign right to decide who it will or will not accept.”
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, asked his counterparts in Prague on Friday to show solidarity in helping migrants, even as he recognized that Europe’s ability to absorb them was not limitless. For the European Union, he said, the current influx, he said, “is the biggest challenge in its history.” Mr. Steinmeier took issue. “We can, as Europe, say that we will shut all borders, and not let anyone else in,” he said. But in doing so, “we would betray our values.”
“We can, as Europe, say that we will shut all borders, and do not let anyone else in,” he continued. But in doing so, “we would betray our values.” The United Nations on Friday gave qualified support to the Juncker plan. It “would go a long way” toward addressing the crisis, William Spindler, a spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency, told reporters in Geneva, but he added that it was still insufficient.
If everybody is allowed in, however, “we would lose the acceptance among our peoples” for sheltering those in need, he said.
The United Nations gave qualified support on Friday to the European Commission’s proposal to relocate 160,000 migrants, warning that the plan could succeed only if accompanied quickly by the creation of large reception centers in Greece, Hungary and Italy. The three countries have become crucial transit points for many migrants.
The European Commission’s plan “would go a long way” toward addressing the current crisis, William Spindle, a spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency, told reporters in Geneva, but he added that it was still insufficient.
“Our estimates indicate even higher needs,” Mr. Spindle said, “but the focus must now be on ensuring all member states take part in this initiative, and that it is swiftly implemented.”“Our estimates indicate even higher needs,” Mr. Spindle said, “but the focus must now be on ensuring all member states take part in this initiative, and that it is swiftly implemented.”
The agency is calling on members of the European Union to relocate 200,000 migrants by the end of 2016, and it will submit a proposal to that effect to European leaders who will meet in Brussels on Monday.
Separately, the agency said on Friday that it had sent trucks to Hungary and Greece with hundreds of prefabricated housing units that will be used to provide temporary shelter.
Hungary has been wary of accepting help for migrants, some of whom have been held in prisonlike wire pens, but the refugee agency said that the Hungarian authorities had accepted an offer of at least 300 housing units; each is designed to hold one family.
An additional 800 housing units are expected to be delivered to the Greek island of Lesbos, where a huge influx of migrants is severely testing the authorities’ ability to respond, and 300 to the island of Kos, where tens of thousands of migrants, around 70 percent of them from Syria, have landed in recent weeks.
The lack of empathy to migrants in parts of Eastern and Central Europe can be explained in part by the fact that countries in the region had relatively limited immigration during the Communist era, helping to create a fear of outsiders that has transcended the revolutions of 1989.
There is also a feeling that the revolutions have not lived up to their promises, and that countries risk undermining their own economies if they open the gates to migrants.
Elsewhere on Friday, the Austrian railway said there would also be no regional traffic between Austria and Hungary this weekend, after Austria stopped rail service across the border with Hungary under the pressure of migrants streaming in.Elsewhere on Friday, the Austrian railway said there would also be no regional traffic between Austria and Hungary this weekend, after Austria stopped rail service across the border with Hungary under the pressure of migrants streaming in.
That prompted several groups of migrants who had arrived from Hungary to start marching toward Vienna along various routes, according to Helmut Marban, a spokesman for the police in the eastern Austrian province of Burgenland.That prompted several groups of migrants who had arrived from Hungary to start marching toward Vienna along various routes, according to Helmut Marban, a spokesman for the police in the eastern Austrian province of Burgenland.
The authorities were also sending buses for some of the crowds massed in and around the village of Nickelsdorf, just inside the Austrian border with Hungary, Mr. Marban said. The bulk of the migrants were to be taken to Vienna. The main highway in the direction of Vienna was closed at least for some hours on Friday because of the danger of migrants marching along the road.
The police at one point closed the main highway in the direction of Vienna because a group of migrants was marching along the road, he said. It was reopened just after noon. The Geneva-based International Organization for Migration said that in Geneva, a record 432,761 migrants had crossed the Mediterranean already this year, compared with 197,940 people crossing in all of 2014, Reuters reported.
The situation continued to deteriorate in Macedonia, where the authorities are scrambling to find ways to cope with an immense increase in the number of migrants traveling through the country. The situation also continued to deteriorate in Macedonia, where the authorities are scrambling to find ways to cope with an immense increase in the number of migrants traveling through the country.
More than 11,000 migrants entered the country in a 24-hour period that ended Friday, according to the United Nations refugee agency, and the number was expected to remain similarly high over the next few days.More than 11,000 migrants entered the country in a 24-hour period that ended Friday, according to the United Nations refugee agency, and the number was expected to remain similarly high over the next few days.
Despite the challenges facing the country, a proposal on Thursday by Nikola Poposki, the minister of foreign affairs, to follow Hungary’s example of build a fence along its border was metwith harsh criticism from domestic civil organizations and political parties. Despite the challenges facing the country, a proposal on Thursday by Nikola Poposki, Macedonia’s minister of foreign affairs, to follow Hungary’s example of build a fence along its border was met with harsh criticism from domestic civil organizations and political parties.
More buses have been brought in to take migrants from the border with Greece, in the south, to Serbia, in the north, within a few hours after they have arrive.
But tension remains high, as Macedonian border guards used batons on Thursday in an attempt to control the huge number of migrants rushing to get away from the muddy roads, heavy rainfall and the immense piles of garbage in and around a registration center.