Syrian refugee bus heads across Germany to Merkel's office

A German small town Thursday sent a bus with scores of Syrian refugees on board on the road to Chancellor Angela Merkel's office, in a protest against her migrant policy.

The Bavarian district chief behind the trip to Berlin, Peter Dreier, said his rural area was buckling under the strain of a mass influx that brought 1.1 million refugees and irregular migrants to Germany last year.

Local citizens had told him "it's time we set a limit," he said on the N24 TV news channel. "We are trying to help these people integrate. But that won't work if this year we face another wave of one million, or even more."

"That's why it's time to take a stand, so that politicians change their tune," he said, adding that he had warned Merkel about his plans for such a journey in a phone call last October, and had announced it on Wednesday.

The coach, filled with 31 refugees, left the southern town of Landshut around 0900 GMT for the 570 kilometre (350 mile) trip to the German capital and was expected to arrive at the chancellory building in the late afternoon.

The local government had said in a statement 51 people would be on board, but 20 of them changed their minds in the morning and stayed, said Jakob Fuchs, the administration's chief of security and public order.

Dreier said the 31 Syrians on the bus, all of whom had been granted asylum status, had volunteered to join the trip. They had stayed in some of the district's 66 migrant facilities.

However, the head of German refugee support group Pro Asyl, Guenther Burkhardt, criticised the trip, saying "people are being exploited for the sake of media footage".

"This doesn't solve the problems... this is a stunt that misuses the plight of refugees to send the message 'We want to close the borders'," he said.

- 'Ability to cope' –

Dreier, speaking to public broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk, said: "There is no end in sight to the wave of refugees, and our country's ability to house them in a dignified way is deteriorating rapidly. And I don't see new apartments being built for the immigrants."

"Look at what is happening abroad, other EU member countries are turning away from us, it can't go on like this," he said.

Some of the Syrians on the bus to Berlin had friends in the capital and wanted to stay there, but all would be free to return to Bavaria, a local government official told news site Spiegel Online, adding that "we won't leave anyone on the street".

The Syrians were legally free to live anywhere in Germany but now had to find apartments, which would be tough in prosperous Landshut, the district said in its statement.

Merkel has been praised for opening Germany's doors to those fleeing war and misery, but has also weathered harsh criticism, especially from Bavaria state, the main gateway for arriving refugees and migrants.

The mood in Germany has darkened further since New Year's Eve when hundreds of women were groped and robbed in a throng of mostly Arab and North African men outside the main railway station in Cologne.

Two weeks after the attacks, the number of criminal complaints reached 652 by Thursday, including 331 sex-related crimes, Cologne prosecutors said.

The number of mostly-female victims stood at 739. In some cases several victims had filed a single criminal complaint between them.

Dreier said that "more and more people have lost confidence, even before the events at New Year's Eve in Cologne, in their state and its institutions' ability to cope".

"If we don't finally take the concerns and needs of our citizens very seriously, the social peace in our country is at risk."