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The offer is exclusively for those refugees who camp out at Budapest Keleti station or who are marching along the highway (even official police estimates range from 800 to 2,500) or along the railway (about 300; all the others on the train stranded at Bicske gave up and were taken to the refugee camp), not for refugees currently held in camps or arriving in the future. The decision was explicitly justified with the need to restore normal transport (there are traffic jams on the highway and trains pass the refugees on one track at 15 km/h, and the subway stations at Keleti were closed off to prevent any more hooligan–refugee clashes). The government also said that now everything depends on Austria: they only promise the refugees to take them to the border, not across it.

According to reporters on the ground, the refugees are incredulous and distrustful – no wonder after the lies and dirty tricks of the previous days.

This decision was taken by an official "emergency committee". For a week, the government didn't feel the need of one. On the day police executed its fateful U-turn at Keleti station, the national police chief was at some government seminar and had no clue. As for the interior minister, he was on holiday and didn't feel the need to interrupt it. Orbán himself was in Brussels on the day of the "end station Bicske" dirty trick. In other words, The Great Hungarian Refugee Crisis is a glaring example of near-total mismanagement – but I doubt many Fidesz voters will recognise that.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Fri Sep 4th, 2015 at 04:37:56 PM EST
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