SHAFAQNA -Â Around 20,000 people marched the steets of Veinna Monday denouncing bad treatment of refugees, after the discovery of 71 dead refugees in a truck on Austrian highway, pollice said.
Demonstrators of all ages were holding banners that read slogans like “Refugees welcome” and “I don’t want Europe to be a mass grave”, while rallying fromVienna’s Westbahnhof train station to a major shopping thoroughfare.
As they slowly wound their way through the capital, the protesters sang Austrian pop songs about love and solidarity, to spontaneous applause from bystanders.
Among those marching were parents carrying children on their shoulders, while police officers watched from the sidelines with their helmets under their arms.
The demonstrators, many dressed in white, congregated in front of parliament, where they lit a sea of candles.
Protests organiser Nadia Rida accused Europe of “political failure” and “inhumane treatment”.
“See how many we are – we too can move things,” she said in an emotional speech.
The march was incredibly peaceful as police did not report any kind of incidents.
The march took place as a service was held for the dead at St. Stephen’s Cathedral.
“We’ve had enough – enough of the deaths, the suffering and the persecution,” the archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, told the congregation, which included senior government members.
He said it was “too awful” to think of the plight of the refugees in the truck, four of whom were children.
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