A mother and her child lie down on the tracks in protest. Photo / AP
A desperate refugee family have been photographed being dragged off an Austria-bound train by Hungarian authorities who wanted to take them away to a migrant holding camp.
Having finally been allowed to leave Budapest on board trains bound for western Europe after a tense two day stand off with police, hundreds of refugees now face further frustration and delays after their train was halted in the nearby town of Bicske and all those on board ordered off.
Hungarian police officers wearing protective helmets and carrying truncheons demanded the refugees make their way to a migrant holding centre in the town - leading to clashes with those desperate to start a new life in western Europe.
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In one particularly harrowing sequence of images a father overcome with emotion tries desperately to protect his wife and child from being taken away - lying down on the tracks in protest before officers dragged them away for their own safety.
Earlier, hundreds of desperate migrants poured into Budapest's main railway station this morning after Hungarian police withdrew following a two-day standoff, triggering chaotic scenes.
Crowds stormed a stationary train, cramming children through open windows in the belief they might travel west to Austria and Germany. Hungary's main railway operator, however, said there would be no direct trains leaving for western Europe today.
Within a few hours a train carrying hundreds of migrants left the railway station, purportedly bound for Sopron on Hungary's border with Austria.
But 20 miles outside Budapest it was stopped and many of those on board ordered off and told to report to a large migrant camp near Bicske, according to Sky News.
Warning: Graphic content:
As one refugee staged their protest on the tracks, others still on board the train are understood to have started chanting "no camp, no camp" and hammering on the train's windows pleading with the authorities not to take them away.
Eventually all carriages were cleared, with hundreds of frustrated migrants left sitting at the sweltering Bicske station demanding to be given water.
A Hungarian government spokesman had earlier claimed the migrants would have to spend time in holding camps instead of being allowed to travelling directly towards western European nations such as Germany.
Over 2,000 migrants, many of them refugees from conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, had been camped in front of the Keleti Railway Terminus, closed to them by authorities saying European Union rules bar travel by those without valid documents.
The standoff has become the latest symbol of Europe's migration crisis, the continent's worst since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.
The police withdrawal at the station coincided with the start of a special parliamentary session to debate tightening migration laws and punishment for those caught trying to breach a 3.5-metre high fence Hungary is building on its border with Serbia.
Senior ruling party lawmaker Gergely Gulyas said the amendments could be passed this week and cut the number of illegal border crossings to "zero" by mid-September.
Hungary is a key arrival point for tens of thousands of migrants entering the European Union, with some 50,000 entering the country in August alone.
On Monday, Hungary allowed several thousand to board trains bound for Austria and Germany but the following day Keleti station was closed to anyone without an EU passport or a valid visa.
The move left around 2,000 men, women and children stranded around the station or in the underground 'transit zone', a makeshift refugee camp beneath the station where thousands have been sheltering on blankets in cramped conditions, looked after only by Hungarian volunteers.
Over the past two days there have been a number of demonstrations by several hundred of the migrants chanting "Germany! Germany!" and tense standoffs with riot police as well as a number of scuffles.
Yesterday scuffles broke out between thousands of migrants and police at Keleti international train station, as Hungary called for clarification on Germany's asylum regime.
Hungary's government explained the U-turn by saying it was applying EU law after confusion caused by an easing of Germany's asylum regulations and called on Berlin's embassy to clarify the rules.
Sporadic fighting broke out between migrants yesterday, while taunts from a small group of far-right skinheads sparked some scuffles.
Earlier, tempers rose when the police suddenly moved in to clear a pathway in the 'transit zone', a makeshift underground refugee camp where thousands have been sheltering on blankets in cramped conditions, looked after only by Hungarian volunteers.
"My friends got on a train on Monday! Why the hell don't they let me go too, all of us?" 41-year-old Syrian protestor Ohlit told AFP in front of the station, furiously brandishing his ticket to Munich that he purchased Monday.
Last night human rights activists and lawyers condemned police in the Czech Republic for writing numbers on the arms of migrants after detaining them.
Officers used pens to mark 214 refugees, mostly Syrians, who were detained on a train yesterday at a border crossing from Austria and Hungary.
The measure has provoked anger because it recalls Nazi Germany's practice of writing numbers on concentration camp prisoners.
Alp Mehmet, vice-chairman of MigrationWatch, which campaigns for managed migration, told MailOnline: 'It is simply wrong and foolish.
"They are treating them in a way that could look like they are branding them or doing what happened to the Jews in Nazi Germany.
"I can understand why people will be repulsed by this type of action. No one is suggesting they won't be treated well, but the sooner they stop this the better all around."
Andrew Stroehlein, European Media Director of Human Rights Watch, tweeted a picture of an officer marking a migrant child and later wrote: "What never stops amazing me are people who look at the Holocaust and think that it only holds lessons for Germans & Jews."
Zuzana Candigliota, a lawyer with the Czech Human Rights League, added: "There is no law allowing the police to mark people like this."
Czech interior ministry spokeswoman Lucie Novakova said the move was introduced because of the increasing number of children among the refugees.
"Our goal is to prevent the children from getting lost," she added.
The measure was used with large groups of refugees to keep record of family members, according to Katerina Rendlova, spokeswoman for a unit of the Czech police dealing with foreigners.
"We also write the code of the train they have arrived on so that we know which country we should return them to within the readmission system."
Unlike some other EU member states, Czech authorities maintain that migrants who enter the country without first having made an asylum request should be returned to the state from which they arrived, in line with the EU's Dublin Provision.
The overwhelming majority of Czechs oppose hosting refugees, according to an August survey by local polling agency Focus in which 93 percent of respondents said they should be returned to their country of origin.
Rendlova said the refugees "used to get the numbers on a piece of paper but they kept throwing them away".
"They have agreed with the marking - they don't have a problem with this, they know it's in their interest."
- Daily Mail
There are currently around 52 million refugees around the world - numbers not seen since the end of World War II.
Images coming out of Europe have highlighted the plight of millions of refugees who have fled from Syria since conflict began in 2011.
Closer to New Zealand, Burma's persecuted Rohingya Muslim population has fled in droves, with many ending up marooned at sea on overcrowded vessels, often without food or water.
The numbers of refugees entering or attempting to get to Europe has caused a range of reactions from Governments. In Europe, Germany has led the way with plans to take 800,000 asylum seekers this year.
Some Europeans have set-up voluntary campaigns such as Refugees Welcome, which is a scheme for sharing homes dubbed the "Airbnb for refugees".
New Zealand is in the UN's refugee programme and has a quota of 750 refugees a year with leeway to take 75 fewer or more.
In the past year 756 refugees came to New Zealand under the quota including 83 from Syria. Refugees are given permanent residence and spend their first six weeks at the Mangere refugee resettlement centre.
All parties within Parliament except for National believe the refugee quota should be increased, which would be the first increase in 30 years.
New Zealand is ranked 87th in the world for total refugee resettlement per capita.
Non-government organisations have also called on the Government to increase the quota or allow for an emergency refugee allocation, as happened with the Tampa refugees.
Prime Minister John Key has been firm on not increasing the quota, but yesterday softened his stance, and said the Government could move earlier than a regular review of the quota next year.
Donate
World Vision has been supporting the Syrian refugees since 2011, and has already reached more than 1 million people left homeless and vulnerable in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria and Iraq.
Donate to its "Forgotten Millions" campaign.
New Zealand Red Cross has an emergency appeal for Syria:
Volunteer
The Red Cross also need volunteers to help refugees settle in New Zealand, and the Auckland Refugee Council also has a volunteer programme.
Provide employment
Work and Income wants to hear from people who have an idea for a project that could help get migrants and refugees into work.
The agency can offer advice and may be able to help with costs.
The uneasy alliance of parties forming the government is on the verge of collapse.