Thousands of refugees yesterday flooded into Austria, seeking shelter after shuttling for days in bordering nations that were unable or unwilling to help.
Austrian police said that about 6,700 people traveled to the central European country from Hungary after being trapped on Friday in a vicious tug-of-war as bickering European governments shut border crossings, blocked bridges and erected new barbed-wire fences in a bid to shut down the flow.
More are expected as people continue to make their way north via Turkey and Greece after fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.
Photo: Reuters
The Greek coast guard said they failed to save a five-year-old girl found in the sea off the island of Lesbos after the boat she traveled on sank, also leaving 14 others missing.
Asylum seekers who headed westward into Croatia after being beaten back by tear gas and water cannons on the Hungarian-Serbian border just days earlier found themselves being returned to Serbia or to Hungary, after Croatia declared it could not handle the influx.
Hungary then put them on buses and sent them on to Austria. More were expected.
Hungary’s military said that it is calling up 500 army reservists as the nation reinforces its borders with razor-wire fences, the deployment of thousands of soldiers to the border and other measures.
The EU’s failure to find a unified response to the crisis left Croatia, one of the poorest countries in the EU, squeezed between the blockades thrown up by Hungary and Slovenia and the unending flood of people flowing north from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Though sympathetic to their plight, Croatian President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic demanded that the EU step forward and take responsibility for the people in transit through the country of 4.2 million.
“We’re flooded, local communities are flooded, the numbers of refugees in some areas is far greater [than] the number of local residents,” Kitarovic told reporters. “So we need to control, we need to stop the flow, we need to get reassurances from European Union what happens to these people who are already in Croatia, and those who still want to transit through Croatia.”
Mindful of people crossing cornfields and forests to transit her country, Kitarovic said that further measures would be taken to secure Croatia’s borders. Underscoring that Croatia itself has only recently begun to recover from the Balkan wars of the 1990s, Kitarovic said that migrants were also in danger of stepping on mines left over from the conflict.
“I will advise highly anyone to use official crossings, but we have to take further measures to insure stability on the border, and that there are no breaches through the corn fields, or forests or any other areas that are not controlled or cleared,” she said.
The thousands seeking sanctuary as doors close behind them are camping in the open.
Police in Slovenia say more than 1,000 migrants have entered the country, but hundreds more are waiting at the border as they let in only limited numbers.
UKRAINE, NVIDIA: The US leader said the subject of Russia’s war had come up ‘very strongly,’ while Jenson Huang was hoping that the conversation was good Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and US President Donald Trump had differing takes following their meeting in Busan, South Korea, yesterday. Xi said that the two sides should complete follow-up work as soon as possible to deliver tangible results that would provide “peace of mind” to China, the US and the rest of the world, while Trump hailed the “great success” of the talks. The two discussed trade, including a deal to reduce tariffs slapped on China for its role in the fentanyl trade, as well as cooperation in ending the war in Ukraine, among other issues, but they did not mention
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi yesterday lavished US President Donald Trump with praise and vows of a “golden age” of ties on his visit to Tokyo, before inking a deal with Washington aimed at securing critical minerals. Takaichi — Japan’s first female prime minister — pulled out all the stops for Trump in her opening test on the international stage and even announced that she would nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize, the White House said. Trump has become increasingly focused on the Nobel since his return to power in January and claims to have ended several conflicts around the world,
REASSURANCE: The US said Taiwan’s interests would not be harmed during the talk and that it remains steadfast in its support for the nation, the foreign minister said US President Donald Trump on Friday said he would bring up Taiwan with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) during a meeting on the sidelines of the APEC Summit in South Korea this week. “I will be talking about Taiwan [with Xi],” Trump told reporters before he departed for his trip to Asia, adding that he had “a lot of respect for Taiwan.” “We have a lot to talk about with President Xi, and he has a lot to talk about with us. I think we’ll have a good meeting,” Trump said. Taiwan has long been a contentious issue between the US and China.
GLOBAL PROJECT: Underseas cables ‘are the nervous system of democratic connectivity,’ which is under stress, Member of the European Parliament Rihards Kols said The government yesterday launched an initiative to promote global cooperation on improved security of undersea cables, following reported disruptions of such cables near Taiwan and around the world. The Management Initiative on International Undersea Cables aims to “bring together stakeholders, align standards, promote best practices and turn shared concerns into beneficial cooperation,” Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said at a seminar in Taipei. The project would be known as “RISK,” an acronym for risk mitigation, information sharing, systemic reform and knowledge building, he said at the seminar, titled “Taiwan-Europe Subsea Cable Security Cooperation Forum.” Taiwan sits at a vital junction on
RSS