Austria: death of two migrants reignites debate
Two migrants from Syria were found dead in a minibus in Burgenland, Austria, on Tuesday. Twenty-seven other men who had been crammed into the vehicle were apprehended. The case harks back to the Parndorf tragedy in 2015, when 71 people died in a refrigerated lorry. Austria and Europe as a whole still haven't found an effective way to deal with migration, commentators lament.
Unbearable indifference
All the discussions since 2015 have been in vain, criticises Der Standard:
“There have been many debates since then about asylum and migration in the EU and its member states. ... But little has changed. ... One thing, however, has increased since 2015: people's indifference. Few people in Europe are shocked nowadays by dead refugees on Mediterranean beaches, in Belarusian and Polish forests or in cramped vehicles, as is now the case once again in Austria. People accept this, look away, turn the page. This is a serious moral problem, and it is contributing to a lack of action in the area of asylum policy that could turn into a real fiasco.”
Only deaths finally provoke a reaction
The Austrian government simply ignored the rising number of illegal border crossings, Kurier fumes:
“It is truly tragic that, as in 2015, it took dead refugees in a smuggler's van for people to sit up and take notice. However, no one should claim that this is a surprising development. Since the end of April, the number of refugees being apprehended on Austria's eastern border has risen day by day. ... From the border communities one could hear complaints again and again and ever louder about how refugees were simply being released onto main squares. In Vienna, however, the issue - except in the Ministry of the Interior - has not yet been addressed politically. That is, must be, different from today on.”