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REFUGEE CRISIS

IMMIGRATION

Refugees overwhelmed with generosity in Vienna

The efforts from NGOs such as Caritas and ordinary people who have volunteered to help and donate money, food and clothing has been overwhelming, as this UNHCR video footage from Westbahnhof railway station shows.

Refugees overwhelmed with generosity in Vienna
Volunteers at Westbahnhof. Photo: Caritas

Austrian authorities say more than 18,000 refugees arrived by train in Vienna after crossing the Hungarian border over the weekend, after an agreement with Austria and Hungary to relax asylum rules. Most were aiming to travel on to Germany.

Young and old have descended on the Westbahnhof and Hauptbahnhof stations with a common goal – to help the exhausted refugees arriving from Hungary.

Organisers at the stations had to ask people to stop bringing some donations at the weekend as they had so many and not enough space to store them all.

Under the EU's Dublin Regulation, asylum seekers must register in the first EU member state in which they arrive. However, the protocol has been widely abused, as many of those who reached Hungary first arrived in Greece, where they failed to claim asylum.

Last week the German government said it is suspending the Dublin rule for Syrians who have travelled to Germany.

Crowds of refugees are still streaming across Hungary's border with Serbia and officials say thousands more migrants are expected to arrive in the next few days.

Follow the tweets from volunteers at Austria's main train stations to find out what donations are most needed here: http://www.refugees.at/#bahnhof

FAR-RIGHT

Germany issues entry ban to Austrian far-right activist Sellner

Radical Austrian nationalist Martin Sellner has been banned from entering Germany, it emerged on Tuesday, days after he was deported from Switzerland.

Germany issues entry ban to Austrian far-right activist Sellner

Sellner, a leader of Austria’s white pride Identitarian Movement, posted a video of himself on X, formerly Twitter, reading out a letter he said was from the city of Potsdam.

A spokeswoman for the city authorities confirmed to AFP that an EU citizen had been served with a “ban on their freedom of movement in Germany”.

The person can no longer enter or stay in Germany “with immediate effect” and could be stopped by police or deported if they try to enter the country, the spokeswoman said, declining to name the individual for privacy reasons.

READ ALSO: Who is Austria’s far-right figurehead banned across Europe?

“We have to show that the state is not powerless and will use its legitimate means,” Mike Schubert, the mayor of Potsdam, said in a statement.

Sellner caused an uproar in Germany after allegedly discussing the Identitarian concept of “remigration” with members of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) at a meeting in Potsdam in November.

Reports of the meeting sparked a huge wave of protests against the AfD, with tens of thousands of Germans attending demonstrations across the country.

READ ALSO:

Swiss police said Sunday they had prevented a hundred-strong far-right gathering due to be addressed by Sellner, adding that he had been arrested and deported.

The Saturday meeting had been organised by the far-right Junge Tat group, known for its anti-immigration and anti-Islamic views.

The group is also a proponent of the far-right white nationalist Great Replacement conspiracy theory espoused by Sellner’s Identitarian Movement.

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