As
human flood continues, Germany slaps controls on border with Austria
By Anthony Faiola and Robert Samuels
BERLIN — Facing an unstaunchable flood of migrants and
refugees, Germany on Sunday said it was reaching a breaking point and would
implement emergency controls on its border with Austria, temporarily suspending
train service and conducting highway checks along the main pipeline for
thousands seeking sanctuary in Western Europe.
The move signaled the extent of the crisis confronting Europe, a
region where a decades-long policy of open borders, once a source of pride and
unity, is eroding as nations struggle to cope with a record flow of migrants.
Only last week, Denmark temporarily closed a highway and suspended trains on
its southern border with Germany, and French authorities have searched for
migrants on trains crossing from Italy.
Yet even as Germany moved to restore “order” to the chaotic
inflow, the death toll continued to jump. Off a Greek island on Sunday, 34
refugees, including four infants and 11 boys and girls, drowned when their
wooden boat overturned and sank. It appeared to mark the worst loss of life in
those waters since the migrant crisis began.
[The
saga of the Syrian family whose 3-year-old drowned ]
Berlin says the emergency on its southeastern border is a
question of national security. Germany has thus far stepped in to take in the
most asylum seekers of any European Union nation, but its ability to aid
refugees is being tested amid a record surge of 40,000 migrants over the
weekend — from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, among other countries.
Officials in the overwhelmed state of Bavaria, for instance, declared they have
run out of space to house refugees.
Coupled with an expected move by Hungary on Tuesday to reinforce
its southern border with Serbia, the German action suggested that migrants may
now face tougher barriers as they seek safety and hope.
“The aim of this measure is to restrict the current flow to
Germany and to return to an orderly procedure of immigration,” German Interior
Minister Thomas de Maizière said Sunday. He implied that many asylum seekers
were trying to reach Germany because of its generous refugee benefits and
seemed to fault other European nations for not stepping up to do more: “Asylum
seekers have to accept that they cannot just choose the member state of the
European Union granting them protection.”
[In
migrant crisis, German generosity comes under fire]
In Germany, the new measures were already taking force. The
German state-owned railway company Deutsche Bahn announced that train traffic
from Austria to Germany would be suspended until 5 a.m. Monday. Bavarian
officials said checks were starting on highways linking Austria to Germany,
while the German Federal Police said that “all available units” were being
rapidly dispatched to the border to help carry out checks.
At the main train station in Vienna, hundreds of desperate
asylum seekers were camped out and waiting for word on whether and how they
could move on. Austrian authorities were telling them to board buses to
overnight shelters, but many refused for fear they would miss their chance to
leave in the morning for Germany.
“We came all this way because we want to live in Germany, and
were so happy when we reached Austria, because in Hungary we were treated so
badly, and now we have the message that the trains have been stopped,” said
Kamal, 50, an Iraqi from Basra traveling with five other men. He declined to
give his last name to protect his family back home.
[Refugees
came searching for a new life. Then someone got lost.]
Ivo Priebe, spokesman for the German Federal Police, said he was
not aware of any bottlenecks due to the new controls. He said that not every
car would be checked but that officers would conduct stop-and-search patrols on
highways, roads and at railway crossings. Several hundred police officers had
been sent into the border region by car and by helicopter earlier Sunday, he
said.
“We know the paths they are using and will carry out increased
controls there,” he said. He did not know how long the checks would be in
place, he said, calling them the result of a “political decision.”
Indeed, the move highlighted the backlash brewing against the
open-arms policy on asylum seekers taken by Chancellor Angela Merkel. Within
her ruling coalition, many are still smarting over her recent decision to allow
in tens of thousands of refugees stranded in Hungary. As Germany struggles to
cope — turning army barracks, schools and former hardware stores into impromptu
shelters — some politicians have called Merkel’s decision into serious
question, arguing that the nation cannot provide sanctuary to all.
On Sunday, Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said at a
news conference in Munich that cars would be monitored at the border in order
to capture human traffickers and allow refugees to request asylum upon being
stopped. But he said those who had already applied for asylum elsewhere in the
E.U. — for instance, in Hungary or Austria — would be sent back to those
countries in accordance with European laws.
“Unchecked immigration on the scale of the past days constitutes
a serious threat for the public safety and order in Germany,” said Herrmann, a
member of the Christian Social Union, sister party of Merkel’s Christian
Democratic Union (CDU).
Depending on how long the stricter German border measures last,
the decision could potentially spark new bottlenecks in Austria that could
ripple into Hungary as well as other countries transited by those fleeing
conflict and poverty.
[European
railways become ground zero for the migrant crisis]
The German decision amounted to the latest blow against open
borders in Europe, a policy dating back to the 1985 Schengen Agreement that
today allows free movement across 26 nations. Assuming the new German checks
are limited in duration, they would not violate the agreement, which allows
nations to institute border restrictions under certain circumstances.
Germany, for instance, has set aside the agreement in the past
for major international summits, and Belgium did so in 2000 during a major
European soccer tournament, said Pieter Cleppe, head of the Brussels office of
Open Europe, a regional think tank.
The open-borders treaty, he said, is not in immediate danger.
But, he warned, “if temporary closures start becoming a de facto permanent set
of border controls, we may be seeing the end of Schengen.”
The 28-nation E.U. is deeply divided over a plan backed by
Germany and France to issue new migrant quotas to all nations. De Maizière on
Sunday said Germany, which is expecting 800,000 asylum applications this year,
could not shoulder the burden alone.
“The German readiness to help must not be overstretched,” he
said. “The measure therefore is also a signal to Europe.”
E.U. interior ministers are meeting Monday in Brussels to
discuss the disputed proposal for quotas and other regional efforts to contain
the crisis.
Migrants and refugees continued to stream into Hungary over the
weekend, as thousands of families from the Middle East and Africa tried to
reach Europe before Hungarian authorities initiate a crackdown next week.
Meanwhile, governments continued to bicker about how to cope
with the influx.
Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann, in an interview with German
news magazine Der Spiegel, compared Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s
treatment of refugees to the Nazis’ deportation of Jews.
“Sticking refugees in trains and sending them somewhere
completely different to where they think they’re going reminds us of the
darkest chapter of our continent’s history,” he said.
Hungary’s foreign minister retorted that such comments were
“totally unworthy of any leading 21st-century European politician” and
counterproductive to solving the crisis, according to the Associated Press.
The above article
shows the current situations of Germany and many other European countries who
are experiencing mass numbers of immigrants. Although Germany has taken in mass
numbers of people, it seems like they have reached a point where their own public
safety and stabilization is at risk. The authors seem to acknowledge that
Germany has offered help to the immigrants but also points out that the process
has put their own country at risk. It also seems like the others empathize to
the cause of Germany's help to the immigrants but not completely agree to the
degree of Germany's help. Overall the article seems to encourage Germany's
closing of the trains for a short period of time but it also empathizes to the
immigrants who came all the way to Austria in order to live in Germany. The
quotes that the authors use like "the German readiness to help must not be
overstretched" show that the German help may have gone a little too far as
to putting causing destabilization (Faiola, Robert).
