Spreading refugee crisis in Europe on land and Sea
I'm thinking that one of the many reasons for this is people in Syria now believe that Assad may be gone soon. So, Alawite Shiites who would be massacred by ISIS if he left are coming now to Europe in droves, especially young men who don't want to die defending a lost cause.
Aug 27, 2015 · Death of 71 Migrants in Austria Illustrates a SpreadingCrisisin Europe. By ALISON SMALE and MELISSA EDDY AUG. 28, 2015. ... The Global RefugeeCrisis, ...
Death of 71 Migrants in Austria Illustrates a Spreading Crisis in Europe
Photo
Bodies found inside an abandoned vehicle near Vienna were taken to a forensics institute in the city on Friday.Credit
Dieter Nagl/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
VIENNA
— Europe’s migration crisis continued to escalate on Friday, as the
United Nations reported record numbers making their way across the
Mediterranean to the Continent this year, and the authorities in Austria
and Hungary sought to find the people responsible for the deaths of 71
people.
At least 150 people were also believed to have drowned at sea
off western Libya, after a fishing boat sank on Thursday, Libyan and
international relief officials said. The exact toll was unclear, but it
had the potential to be among the highest this summer for refugees and
migrants trying to reach European shores.
Ibrahim
al-Attoushi, a Red Crescent official, said that 82 bodies had washed
ashore and that about 100 people were still missing, Reuters reported.
In Austria,
the authorities reported that four children — three boys ages 7 to 10,
and a toddler girl — were among the passengers found on Thursday in the
back of a truck with no ventilation that was abandoned east of Vienna in
the summer heat. The other passengers included 59 men and eight women.
Three people held in Hungary are
being questioned after the bodies of 71 people, believed to be Syrian
migrants, were found in a truck near Vienna.
By REUTERS on Publish Date August 28, 2015.
Photo by Roland Schlager/European Pressphoto Agency.
Watch in Times Video »
A
Syrian passport was found on one of the victims, leading the
authorities to conclude that at least some of the victims were part of
the throng of people fleeing war and turmoil in the Middle East and
northern Africa.
The
United Nations refugee agency reported that the number of refugees and
migrants crossing the Mediterranean to reach Europe had reached 310,000
this year, up from 219,000 in 2014.
Close
to 200,000 people have landed in Greece this year and around 110,000
more have reached Italy, Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the refugee
agency told reporters in Geneva.
More
than 2,500 people have died at sea this year, not including those
believed to be victims in Thursday’s sinking off Libya. In 2014, 3,500
died or were lost while trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.
“The way people are being packed onto boats is causing their deaths,” Ms. Fleming said.
At
the root of many of the deaths are the ruthless practices of human
traffickers who overload boats, cars, trucks and vans with those willing
and able to pay the high cost to cross the Mediterranean or European
borders.
Tens of thousands of people, most fleeing unrest, are
desperately pushing through the Balkans to reach Hungary before it seals
its border. The Times is documenting their journey.
The Austrian authorities believe that is what happened to the migrants who were discovered in the truck on Thursday.
Officials
had initially said they expected to recover as many as 50 corpses from
the truck, which was abandoned in the emergency lane of a highway
southeast of Vienna, where the authorities believe it had been for 24
hours, after arriving from south of Budapest.
But
once the authorities were able to open the rear hold of the vehicle,
said Hans Peter Doskozil, director of police in the eastern Austrian
state of Burgenland, they found more corpses than they had expected.
They are now scrambling to identify the victims and have set up a
hotline for anyone seeking information about a missing family member.
The
authorities said it was too early to give an exact cause of death, but
they noted that there was no ventilation in the sides of the truck, one
of which was dented. It was not possible to say how long the dent had
been there nor whether it had been caused by a traffic accident or by
people inside trying to break through.
“We
cannot say whether air was able to circulate through the cooling system
or the roof,” Mr. Doskozil said, “but I believe that it is highly
likely that people in this truck asphyxiated.”
The
authorities said on Friday that four people suspected of involvement in
the truck operation had been detained in Hungary. The Hungarian police
said that three of those detained are Bulgarian, and that the fourth is
Afghan.
News ClipsBy THE ASSOCIATED PRESS1:24
Officials on Bodies in Truck Near Vienna
Chancellors Werner Faymann of Austria
and Angela Merkel of Germany expressed sorrow on Thursday after police
discovered at least 20 bodies of presumed migrants piled in a truck east
of Vienna.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS on Publish Date August 27, 2015.
Photo by Joe Klamar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images.
Watch in Times Video »
An
initial investigation, conducted jointly by Austrian and Hungarian
officials, led to the detention of three of the people, and they are
believed to be in the lowest rank of a much wider Bulgarian-Hungarian
human-trafficking ring, Mr. Doskozil said.
“We
believe that one perpetrator, a Bulgarian citizen of Lebanese descent,
is the current owner of the vehicle,” he added. “Two other suspects who
have been detained include a Bulgarian citizen and an individual in
possession of a Hungarian identity card, whose nationality has not yet
been determined — both believed to be the drivers of the truck.”
In
a separate case, 10 Syrian migrants were injured early Friday when a
van overturned on a highway in Hungary, the police said in a statement.
Photo
Three people have been detained in connection with the deaths of 71 people in the truck.Credit
Heinz-Peter Bader/Reuters
The
Austrian Red Cross said it expected as many as 4,000 people to cross
the country’s eastern border over the weekend, and the authorities said
they would increase controls. They emphasized, however, that they would
not be able to stop each of the roughly 3,000 trucks that enter the
country from the east every day.
The
migrants found dead in Austria most likely followed a now-popular route
from Greece, through the Balkans and Hungary, and toward the north. The
movement is made possible by Europe’s open borders, which allow passage
between member countries and is a fundamental part of life in the
28-nation bloc.
Hungary
reported a daily average of roughly 2,000 people cross its border with
Serbia, but on Wednesday the number rose to 3,241 people, including 700
children — the highest number in a single day recorded this year, the
United Nations refugee agency reported.
In a bid to deter the flow of refugees, Hungary has accelerated construction of a fence along its border with Serbia,
but humanitarian-agency officials in Geneva described it as “a
roundabout subsidy to the smugglers,” who charge refugees and migrants
more money to get them past it.
Building
walls “looks tough, it looks proactive, it looks as if you’re taking
people’s complaints seriously that there are too many migrants,” Joel
Millman, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration,
said. “It doesn’t work.”
Correction: August 28, 2015
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article
referred incorrectly to the arrest of three people in connection with
the Austrian truck. They were arrested in Hungary, not Austria. In
addition, the article misidentified the nationalities of the three
people. Two are Bulgarian, and the nationality of the third had not been
determined; none have been identified as Hungarian citizens. The error
was repeated in a capsule summary.
Alison Smale reported from
Vienna, and Melissa Eddy from Berlin. Palko Karasz contributed reporting
from London, and Nick Cumming Bruce from Geneva.
end quote from:
One lady's comment about there being more men than women migrating is about middle Eastern Culture. Basically, it isn't safe for women to travel much. Even when I was in India out in the country in the 1980s women would travel in groups of 12 so they wouldn't be raped. Women don't have equality in these cultures so the net effect is they are either worshiped at home and protected or they are raped on the streets. This is just a problem within the cultures of the Middle East, (especially out in the country) away from cities where there is less law enforcement. The areas like this extend from All of the Middle East to Bangladesh. This cannot change until more men respect all women even if they are away from home.
Even here in the U.S. women are not safe in some situations. So, imagine these unsafe places being much more prevalent in Middle Eastern Cultures.
So, unless each woman migrating or traveling as a refugee has one or more men there to protect her it isn't safe to travel even in a leaky boat so it wouldn't be done.
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