Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of angry young men in Budapest demand they be allowed to proceed to Germany, where Angel Merkel thinks she has room for some 800,000 this year alone. Lousy poster children for the invasion of Europe, the BBC opts instead to focus on the fetching Ms Nour.
Now on my way back to Australia, the BBC’s take on the European refugee crisis sticks in my mind. Or, is it in my craw?
“Haven’t they a right to travel?” queried the BBC anchorwoman in conversation with a correspondent reporting from outside Budapest’s chief railway station. Only in my dreams did the correspondent respond by saying, “Sure they do — if you no longer think that having travel documents is a requirement to travel internationally, and that European law can be causally set aside.”
Hungary is acting absolutely in keeping with European law. Others, such as Greece, funnelling asylum seekers on, are not. Asylum seekers have the option to register at centres on Hungary’s border where they can apply for asylum. This, of course, does not suit them. The cameras show hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Syrian asylum-seekers/refugees/economic migrants — choose your descriptor according to ideology and preference — demonstrating outside the terminus, chanting in unison: “Where do we go? Germany!” Note that they are not chanting Wohin gehen wir, Deutschland! (Google translation, be warned), as what they seek is a far wider audience than German speakers alone. They are mostly young men, with the odd woman in a head scarf among them. From that, I safely take it, I think, that they are Muslims not Christians.