A New Meaning for 'Hit-and-Run'
"I saw that big cruise ship coming closer to us but I had never imagined it would ram our boat."
"The people plunged into the river in the darkness and shouted 'Help me!' while floundering in the waters."
"But I couldn't do anything for them."
Ms. Jeong, 31, South Korean tourist, Budapest, Hungary
"Our boat was turned over in an instant and began sinking."
"All those on the deck fell into [the] water and I think those staying in the cabin on the first floor couldn't probably get out of the ship swiftly."
Ms. Yoon, 32, South Korean tourist, Budapest, Hungary
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| Boats, divers, spotlights, and radar scanning are involved in the massive search operation Getty Images |
"I used to actually train [navy] ships on how to do man overboard and how crews are supposed to respond, so that training kind of kicked in, and I stayed topside."
"[My tour ship was two bridges downstream from the collision, so we were] keeping an eye out for possible individuals in the water."
"The first chap was inside a life-ring. He had it over his torso and he was looking up at me."
"The captain actually got the police boat to respond very quickly, and I'd like to think that they did recover him alive."
"We saw backpacks going through the water, empty safety rings, upper deck chairs, lots of garbage and then oil. All of this stuff was being swept down from the crash site."
Ken Hoffer, retired navy captain, Halifax, Nova Scotia
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| Those pulled from the water were taken to hospital with hypothermia and shock symptoms EPA |
It took all of seven seconds after a collision between two tour boats, when the larger of the two knocked the smaller one sideways and the struck vessel sank. There were 35 people on board, 33 of them were South Korean tourists, and among them seven people were rescued. The ship's Hungarian captain and one crew member are among the missing, for a total of 21 missing, seven dead.
The sightseeing boat had completed its hour-long night tour of Budapest on Wednesday, and was preparing to stop at a disembarkment point when the larger cruise ship hit it under a bridge near the location of the parliament building, sitting close to the river bank. Survivors said twenty people had been on deck, taking photographs, while the others were in the cabin.
Ms. Jeong described her horror at witnessing what happened next when she and others on deck were thrown by the impact into the freezing Danube water after the collision. A lifeboat drifted toward her and she grasped hold, then threw a rope to another tourist, Ms. Yoon. Both holding on to the lifeboat, the women saw the heads of other people bobbing helplessly up and down in the fast currents of the river.
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| The Hableany boat - seen in this archive photo - has a capacity of 45 people for sightseeing trips Reuters |
A crew member of another sight-seeing boat sailing nearby extended a hand to another survivor, Mr. Ahn, 60. But Mr. Ahn lost his grip, to be carried away by the rushing water until he grabbed a drifting plastic object that kept him afloat and saved his life. Rescuers, according to Ms. Yoon, were able to pick up those who were in the lifeboats or clinging to them, or who managed to hold the hands of people extending from other nearby boats.
She watched, she said, as the cruise ship that had rammed the boat she was on, kept sailing on, taking no measures at rescue after causing the collision. Hungarian police have detained the Ukrainian captain of the cruise ship, a 64-year-old man who is suspected of endangering water transport, which led to the deadly mass accident.
According to Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, underwater visibility in the Danube at the site where the tour boat sank is
"practically zero", leading to complicated efforts to salvage the wreck. South Korean foreign minister Kang Kyung-wha stated at a joint news conference that a South Korean rescue team is slated to join the search for the 21 still-missing South Koreans.
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| Rescue workers gather at the bank of the Danube River in downtown Budapest. |
Labels: Hungary, Marine Tragedy, South Korea, Tourism
Complications of Humanitarianism
"If we don't find a solution, then this chaos will be the result. That will become a domino effect and then we can forget Schengen [open-border EU policy]."
Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn
"[The border checks represent a [clear signal to our] European partners that Germany, even if we are prepared to provide disproportionate assistance, cannot accommodate all of the refugees alone."
German Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel
"You have to defend Hungary and Europe. You have to defend the country's borders while at the same time you have to protect our way of life."
"You [Hungarian police] are the defenders of our culture, our way of life and our sovereignty."
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban
"The aim of this measure is to limit the current influx to Germany and to return to orderly entry procedures. This is also urgently necessary for security reasons."
"The great readiness to help that Germany has shown in recent weeks ... must not be over-stretched."
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere
Image Credits: RT.
The refugee crisis goes on unabated. However many tens of thousands keep flooding into Europe and manage to gain entry over the objections of Greece and Hungary, increasing numbers follow behind them. Germany's magnanimity in the face of the humanitarian crisis caused by the failure of Muslim and Arab countries to protect their citizens, to counter the deadly scourge of virulent jihad, to monitor and punish the self-destructive regimes that prey on their own citizens is tearing Europe apart.
Hungary has completed its fence between its border and Serbia's, to halt the endless stream of determined migrants and refugees. Germany and Austria have reacted to the unstoppable waves of migrants heading to their borders in an enthusiasm of welcome benefits to the homeless displaced by internal conflict and external terrorism, by calling a halt to unfettered access. Now, official papers are checked and security from infiltration by jihadis has become a palpable concern.
Border controls have been reinstated for an unspecified period of time. It is a move, according to Germany's minister of the interior, that represents a signal to Europe:
"Germany is facing up to its humanitarian responsibility, but the burdens connected with the large number of refugees must be distributed in solidarity within Europe". Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka confirmed his country has increased its police presence on the Austrian-Czech border.
In Germany, Munich already peopled with earlier migrations of Muslims, is now setting out its welcome for all the new arrivals whose presence will gift Germany with six million Muslims to complement its indigenous German population which isn't replicating itself sufficiently to ensure that the country's economic future looks promising enough. The influx of newcomers will aid in that respect, according to German expectations.
And while populating Germany, they will transform it beyond recognition.
The Netherlands, Slovakia, Austria and the Czech Republic have joined Germany's tightening border controls. Main highways in Austria have had to be closed in reflection of the tens of thousands of migrants crossing from Hungary. The test of unity between the western and eastern members of the European Union to contain the crisis of this human flood of refugees and migrants is in the making.
The migrant quotas are no longer mandatory, while the EU ministers are hoping for 'flexibility'.
Should migrants cut under Hungary's new border fence migrants risk prison and deportation.
"Women and children at a
migrant camp in Hessen are being sexually molested by Muslim “refugees”
on such a regular basis that they are afraid to go to the bathroom at
night and have to remain fully clothed when they sleep."
"Women who are not accompanied by men
are considered easy prey, with some allegedly being forced into
prostitution. [The groups behind the letter are calling for women and
children to be segregated from male migrants]."
LFR (Landesfrauenrat) Hessen, Der Paritätische Hessen, Pro Familia
Hessen and the Landesarbeitsgemeinschaft Hessischer Frauenbüros. [German social welfare organizations]
"Undoubtedly this will be seen as one
of the avenues that the Islamic State employ in order to get their own
people in position to where they may be able to confront who they see to
be the enemies who are leading the campaign against them."
"So I think this is a very real possibility [ISIL infiltration to Europe. It’s
probably already happening. The extent of it is very difficult to know
until it has some kind of manifestation."
"Demographically, we are the fastest
growing community, and this is only going to add, I think, to the impact
of Islam and Muslims in Europe and in the West. Even
without the crisis, Islam is the fastest growing ideology in Europe and
in America. Many people are embracing Islam."
"Undoubtedly there are many there who are practicing Muslims who are
looking for themselves to settle. And of course we carry our
ideology with us."
Anjem Choudary, founder, outlawed Al Muhajiroun pro-al-Qaida organization, Britain
Labels: Europe, Germany, Hungary, Islamism, Jihad, Middle East, Refugees, Syria
A Burdensome Horror and Human Tragedy
"[Migrants] are not entitled to move freely within the European Union even after entering Hungary."
"If the migrants don't comply with the very basic rules that are in place in the European Union, there is no solution to this problem."
Zoltan Kovacs, Hungarian government spokesman
"We are among the few who are actually taking genuine measures [to enforce border controls]."
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto
A migrant lies on the track with a baby as she is detained in Bicske, Hungary on Thursday.
As international news continue to focus on the ongoing refugee crisis with its unprecedented numbers fleeing persecution, conflict and sectarian strife in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, attention was riveted on the heart-breaking photograph of a Turkish border guard encountering the lifeless body of a small child washed upon a beach in Turkey, another victim of unseaworthy boats whom human smugglers convince migrants and refugees will bring them to haven in Europe.
Aylan Kurdi, all of three years old, died in the attempt to reach the Greek island of Kos. With him, his older brother, five-year-old Galip, also drowned, as the small craft they were being conveyed in, with their father and their mother along with other migrants, capsized in five-feet waves. Two 15-foot craft were being used by smugglers who charged the desperate families $2000 for passage from Bodrum peninsula headed to the Greek islands.
In all, 23 people died when both boats sank. Another three children and a woman among the dead. Seven people were rescued, and two were able to reach shore, wearing life-jackets. There is no hope that the two missing will be found alive. These were a handful of people among the over three- hundred-thousand who have surged over land and by sea to reach Europe, and, they hope, rescue from the dreadful misery their lives in their home countries have become.
The European border control agency has estimated that 23,000 people had managed to arrive in one week, to Greece, representing a fifty percent increase from the week previous. Fully 160,000 people have inundated Greece with their burgeoning presence in the first nine months of the year. Hungarian authorities have refused to allow asylum-seekers to travel onward to their favoured destination, Austria and Germany.
Germany has pledged that it is prepared to take in any Syrian refugees that manage to reach its border. It estimates that it will have taken in 800,000 Muslim asylum seekers in the past year alone. With the number of Muslim immigrants that Germany has already absorbed that will bring the total Islamic demographic in Germany to six million. That six million has been transforming German society, its culture and its prison population inexorably.
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Migrant children
demonstrate with placards in a railway station in Budapest, Hungary, on
Aug. 31. The European Union is grappling with an unprecedented influx of
people fleeing war, repression and poverty in what the bloc has
described as its worst refugee crisis in 50 years. Attila Kisbendek/AFP/Getty Images
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Quite a contrast in the space of 70 years; the willing absorption of six million people with a totally different heritage, ethnic group, religion, culture and values, after a hugely successful effort at genocide through a state machinery using every technical advantage it could muster in the face of a global war effort, to destroy the lives of an equal number of Jews, during the Holocaust years. Now comes an influx of Jew haters as virulent as those of the Nazis to transform a Nordic country to a Middle Eastern one.
The real problem is the horrible failure of the world community to halt the Islamist rampages against Muslim populations, in the paroxysms of tribal, ethnic and sectarian bloodbaths. That neither the Arab League nor the broader international community saw fit to put a halt to Syria's Bashar al-Assad's mounting butchery of Syrian Sunni civilians is a blot on world history. Syrians fleeing the horrors of being barrel-bombed by their own government, of being killed by Hezbollah and Shiite militias, comprise the bulk of the refugees.
The crisis is escalating. Desperate and horribly vulnerable men, women and children are in dire need of humanitarian aid. Who cannot imagine how dispiritingly hopeless it seems to people who have risked life and limb to escape potential death, to discover that the haven they imagined was simply a figment of their imagination? These are people who have not fled from their countries of origin willingly; what people exiles themselves from all that they know and cleave to, leaving property and security behind for the unknown?
The tragedy is that this has happened. That the forces of evil overcame the inertia of comfort and willing oblivion to the responsibility to give some measure of protection to those whose very humanity demands it, rather than leaving them to suffer the consequences of having been born in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now, the 28-member European Union cannot agree on the least they can manage to ameliorate the desperate condition of human beings whom fate has scorned with misery.
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Migrants sleep at a
park near a bus station on Aug. 30 in Belgrade, Serbia. Over 10,000
migrants, including many women with babies and small children, have
crossed into Serbia as they head toward Hungary and the European Union.
The number of people leaving their homes in war-torn countries like
Syria marks the largest migration of people since World War II. Srdjan Stevanovic/Getty Images
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Greece, Italy and Hungary plead for more assistance from their EU partners. Germany, pledging to take in the lion's share of the asylum-desperate in one year alone has also appealed for its EU partners to share more of the load being imposed on Europe. While the Arab nations whose inaction in the face of one of their own transforming the Middle East into a personal charnel house without consequences, lean with comfort on their oil riches and deplore Western interference in Arab affairs.
Labels: Africa, Asia, European Union, Germany, Hungary, Refugees, Syria
