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| Refugees walk down the M7 towards Austria |
It was an exodus born of anger and frustration.
After nearly a week stranded in mounting squalor outside Budapest’s main railway station, more than 1,000 refugees took matters into their own hands on Friday and decided to try to walk towards a better life.
Half protest-march, half procession, the dismal crocodile of refugees left the Keleti station at 10am carrying what meagre possessions they could – a carrier bag of clothes, a bag of baby’s bottles, a few books or a phone – and set off for Vienna more than 150 miles away.
Many carried pictures of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, which they waved defiantly at the police, demanding to know why Hungary was not treating the refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia with more compassion.
While in Hungary’s parliament, politicians passed strict new laws that will make illegal crossings of the country’s newly fortified border with Serbia punishable by three years in jail, the procession wound slowly through the suburbs of Budapest and up the M1 motorway towards the Austrian border.
Then, hours after the refugees started trudging west, the Hungarian authorities made a concession of sorts, announcing that it would lay on buses to take them to border town of Hegyeshalom if they wanted.
It did not seem a wholly altruistic gesture.
"The top priority is that Hungary's transport should not be crippled," Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief-of-staff Janos Lazar told a press conference.
His chief of staff, Janos Lazar, added: "This does not automatically mean that they can leave the country. We are waiting for the Austrian government's response." » | Peter Foster, outside Budapest and James Badcock in Bicske | Friday, September 4, 2015
