Refugee crisis: Danish police close road and rail links with Germany

Refugees walk north along Denmark’s E45 motorway. ‘We know many of them want to go to Sweden, but naturally we cannot let that happen,’ said police. Photograph: Benjamin Nolte/EPA

Reuters in Copenhagen

 

Wednesday 9 September 2015 20.50 BST Last modified on Thursday 10 September 2015 08.01 BST

Danish police have closed a motorway and rail links with Germany in an effort to prevent refugees heading north to Sweden, as the crisis facing Europe spreads northwards.
The E45 motorway, a vital passage of traffic for people and goods between Sweden and Germany, was closed on Wednesday when about 300 refugees, including children, began walking on it.


Police tried to persuade them to leave but appeared reluctant to use force, witnesses in Denmark said. “We are trying to talk to them and tell them that it is a really bad idea to walk on the motorway,” a police spokeswoman said.
Police also asked the state-owned railway operator to stop all trains between Germany and Denmark until further notice. Services were expected to resume at some point on Thursday.
Denmark is part of the EU’s Schengen zone, where borders are meant to be open to allow free movement. When asked whether blocking the road and rail links meant breaking with the Schengen system, a police spokesman said he did not think so as he expected traffic to start moving again soon, although he could not say when.
At Rødby, where train ferries arrive in Denmark from Germany, two trains carrying about 240 people were stopped by police. Refugees on board were refusing to leave the train, police said. About 100 foreign passengers left a train that was still on a ferry and were transferred to a school for registration.

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Many refugees are reluctant to register in Denmark, where a centre-right government has cut benefits.
“We know that many of them want to go to Sweden, but naturally we cannot let that happen,” police spokesman Carsten Andersen said. “So right now, we have asked them to start a dialogue. We are waiting patiently for some of them to agree to that and stick their heads out of the trains.”
Denmark’s justice minister, Sǿren Pind, said he was cutting short a trip to the United States to return home.
“For security reasons, the police, in collaboration with German authorities, decided that for the near future no travellers from Syria, Iraq, etcetera will arrive in Denmark by ferry to Rødby,” police said in a statement.