In one of the worst bursts of violence that this tense refugee summer has seen, Hungarian riot police on Wednesday responded to rocks, taunts and small fires set by agitated refugees and migrants at a border crossing with water cannons, head-cracking batons, and both tear gas and pepper spray.
Although the word was quickly spreading along the trail that heading toward Croatia from Serbia was a better bet than trying to push through the heavily guarded border into Hungary, hundreds of straggling refugees continued to turn up at the crossing here in hopes that Hungary would change its mind and let them through.
However, Hungary did not change its mind — prompting a grim demonstration of what can happen when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.
Photo: AP
The demonstration is likely to continue as more migrants and refugees try to escape war and poverty in their homelands and find a new life in a continent that cannot agree on what to do with them. Already, the trail was adapting, finding new ways to reach western Europe.
Tension had been building through the afternoon. About 2,500 refugees and migrants had set up camp along the narrow, two-lane road leading to the small crossing here — nothing more than a cluster of battered buildings and two lines of fence, topped with razor wire.
On the Serbian side of the green fence that marked the border zone was a squalid encampment of tents, swirling trash, wailing children and a few Serbian police officers, watching the chaos unfold. On the Hungarian side, beyond a second fence, were hundreds of police officers, some with protective shields and full riot gear, others in crisp uniforms and red caps, standing in formation and ignoring the crowds peeking at them.
The crowd grew increasingly impatient, and about 200 people pushed up against the first gate, removing its razor wire and breaking it open at 3pm. A second, lower fence remained closed, a few meters farther into the border zone.
A squad of about 100 riot police officers moved into the area just behind that second fence and an armored vehicle, topped with water cannons, came next.
“Open, open,” the crowd chanted.
Young men clambered on top of the first gate and began bouncing up and down on it, trying to knock it off its hinges.
All of a sudden, an invisible, noxious gas began to pour into the crowd from the Hungarian side. In a panic, the people nearest the gate began to scramble backward, pushing people aside as they flailed, tears streaming from their eyes. Children grabbed for their parents. Some tossed oranges and apples they had been carrying back at the riot police, ineffectually. People ran into one another, tripped, fell.
People grabbed for bottles of water offered by volunteers along the roadside, slapping it onto their faces and trying to wash the gas out of their eyes and hair.
The crowd collapsed into chaos and ran back into Serbia. Then, the crowd reformed and slowly moved forward again. Again, there was a gas attack.
Grabbing piles of wood and bits of trash, a few dozen refugees and migrants responded by building small fires in the road and surrounding fields, the acrid smell of burning plastic bags filling the air.
The armored vehicle fired its water cannons toward the crowd and the fires, putting some of them out and turning the area into a swamp.
Meanwhile, others went behind a battered building marked Duty Free Shop and began breaking crumbling concrete and hurling pieces toward the Hungarian police, who were lined up just out of range.
“It has been pressure, pressure, for more than a day now,” said Rafy, 36, a high-school geography teacher from Swiada, Syria, who watched the rock throwing from a safe distance. “It is like a balloon filling up. Eventually it must burst.”
He declined to give his last name, fearing that the family he left behind would be persecuted by Syrian officials.
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