European migrant crisis: Britain to accept thousands more Syrian asylum seekers; UN calls EU to increase intake by up to 200,000

Updated

Britain says it will "act with its heart" and take thousands more Syrian asylum seekers as the United Nations called on the European Union to admit up to 200,000 refugees as part of a "mass relocation program" that would be binding on EU states.

Key points UN says every EU country must deal with crisis

Hungary's PM warns of 'endless flow' of asylum seekers

Australia to consider increasing number of Syrian refugees

British prime minister David Cameron said on Friday the UK had already accepted around 5,000 Syrians under its existing resettlement schemes, but would continue to take in more asylum seekers.

"Given the scale of the crisis and the suffering of people, today, I can announce that we will do more in providing resettlement for thousands more Syrian refugees," Mr Cameron told reporters in Lisbon.

Britain's government has faced calls to take in many more refugees after broad media coverage of the image of a dead Syrian toddler washed up on a Turkish beach.

Warning: This story contains an image that may distress some readers.

High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres made the call for the EU to admit up to 200,000 asylum seekers as hundreds, many of them refugees from the Syrian war, woke after a night on a packed train stranded at a railway station west of Budapest, refusing to go to a nearby processing camp.

"People who are found to have a valid protection claim ... must then benefit from a mass relocation program, with the mandatory participation of all EU member states," Mr Guterres said in a statement.

"A very preliminary estimate would indicate a potential need to increase relocation opportunities to as many as 200,000 places."

Although refugee numbers have been rising, the EU has borne relatively little of the refugee burden of the Syrian war, which has created 4 million refugees in countries neighbouring Syria and displaced a further 7.6 million within the country.

"This is a defining moment for the European Union, and it now has no other choice but to mobilise full force around this crisis," Mr Guterres said.

"The only way to solve this problem is for the Union and all member states to implement a common strategy, based on responsibility, solidarity and trust."

His call came ahead of a meeting later on Friday of EU foreign ministers to discuss the continent's refugee crisis, of which Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi, whose lifeless body was found face down in the surf on a Turkish beach on Wednesday, has become a searing symbol.

Referring to the pictures of the dead child, which "had stirred the hearts of the world public", Mr Guterres said: "Europe cannot go on responding to this crisis with a piecemeal or incremental approach."

"No country can do it alone, and no country can refuse to do its part," he said.

No country can do it alone, and no country can refuse to do its part. UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres

Mr Guterres's appeal tallied with a call by France and Germany for binding EU quotas to share the burden of the influx of migrants and refugees, which has hit Greece, Italy and transit countries in south-eastern and central Europe the hardest.

EU officials confirmed European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker would next week unveil a plan for the relocation of at least 120,000 more refugees.

Aylan's father, Abdullah Kurdi, returned to his hometown of Kobane on Friday where he buried his wife, other son and Aylan, who all died as the family tried to get to Europe.

Mr Kurdi wept as their bodies were buried alongside each other in the Martyrs' Ceremony in the predominantly Kurdish town.

Speaking at the border crossing, Mr Kurdi said he hoped the death of his family would encourage Arab states to help Syrian refugees.

"I want from Arab governments — not European countries — to see [what happened to] my children, and because of them to help people," he said in footage posted online by a local radio station.

Hungary's PM says flow of asylum seekers 'endless'

Hungary's right-wing prime minister Viktor Orban said on Friday warned Europeans risk becoming a minority on their own continent.

He defended his country's hardline stand on asylum seekers as hundreds protested around a train stationed in the town of Bicske.

"The reality is that Europe is threatened by a mass inflow of people, many tens of millions of people could come to Europe," Mr Orban told public radio in a regular interview.

"Now we talk about hundreds of thousands but next year we will talk about millions and there is no end to this.

"All of a sudden we will see that we are in minority in our own continent."

Shouts of "No camp, freedom!" broke out. Using shaving foam, protesters wrote on the side of the train: "No camp. No Hungary. Freedom train."

The migrants had wrestled with police on Thursday, some throwing themselves on the tracks insisting they be allowed to remain on the train bound for a border town near Austria.

The train had left Budapest on Thursday morning after a two-day standoff at the city's main railway station as police barred entry to some 2,000 migrants.

Hungary says they must be registered, as per EU rules, but many refuse, fearing they will be sent back to Hungary if caught later in western and northern Europe.

Hungary has hit out at Germany, the most popular destination among the migrants, for saying it would accept asylum requests from Syria regardless of where they entered the EU.

Parliament in Budapest is expected to endorse a raft of measures to effectively seal Hungary's southern border with Serbia to asylum seekers.

It wants to create holding zones on the frontier where migrants will be held while their papers are processed and potentially sent back into Serbia.

"Hungary cannot ignore Schengen rules in its procedures," Mr Orban said, referring to Europe's zone of passport-free travel.

"Migrants must cooperate with Hungarian authorities, with the German authorities and if Germany wants to admit Syrians, it should issue permission for them to go into Germany."

Mr Orban said the new measures being debated by parliament would be implemented from September 15.

"Everyone should be prepared for this: Serbia, Macedonia, the immigrants, the human traffickers. We ourselves will prepare for this, and a different era will start from September 15," he said.

Poland's foreign minister Grzegorz Schetyna said the EU had to tackle the reasons for the arrival of migrants.

"The scale of the migration is enormous, so we can't focus — I'm talking about the whole of Europe — on allocating illegal migrants without fighting the causes [of their arrival]," Mr Schetyna told private Radio Zet.

"We have to think of how to stop the illegal migration. Otherwise [we may] soon have 3-4 million economic refugees."

Bulgaria detained 39 Syrians in a forest near the western town of Pernik after they were apparently abandoned on a motorway as they tried to make it from Bulgaria into neighbouring Serbia, the district governor said on Friday.

"They do not have documents," Pernik governor Irena Sokolova said.

"These are people who have passed the primary interviews and procedures required for granting them refugee status.

"They are currently at the police station where fingerprints will be taken in order to identify them."

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said Australia was considering whether to would increase the number of Syrian refugees it would accept.

Ms Bishop's comment came after a stinging criticism in a New York Time editorial of Australia's "unconscionable" border protection methods.

AFP/Reuters

Topics: immigration, community-and-society, government-and-politics, unrest-conflict-and-war, hungary, european-union, syrian-arab-republic

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