EU, Amnesty, MSF slam Austria

(ANSA) - Strasbourg, April 12 - Austria came under fire Tuesday as EU officials and leading human rights organizations slammed its decision to build a barrier on its side of the Brenner Pass on the border with Italy to keep asylum seekers out.
    "What is happening at the border between Italy and Austria is not the right solution," EU Migration and Home Affairs Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos told the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Vienna last week threatened to shut down its side of the Brenner Pass if migrant flows increased to "uncontrollable" levels, saying asylum seeker arrivals in Italy were set to double to 300,000 this year. "We need more checks on those wanting to enter Europe," Austrian President Heinz Fischer said Monday, adding that the Brenner Pass barrier will not include a wall or barbed wire.
    Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann on Tuesday defended the move to beef up border controls as "desirable, necessary and just".
    He added that doing nothing and not putting limits of the people arriving was "out of the question". The chancellor added: "I take the responsibility".
    Also on Tuesday, Amnesty International Italy said Austria's move will create a bottleneck and a humanitarian crisis such as the one taking place at the Greece-Macedonia border, where thousands of refugees from Syria and other war zones have languished in limbo in a makeshift camp at Idomeni for months. "Austria has decided to raise... an obstacle that will create a situation similar to Idomeni," Amnesty International Italy Director Gianni Rufini said. "We will find ourselves with improvised camps and a humanitarian crisis...that this should happen today on European soil is disappointing and depressing". Humanitarian group Doctors without Borders (MSF) said border police at Idomeni have injured 200 people with tear gas and another 37 with rubber bullets, which were being shot "at children's height".
    "At least three children were wounded by these projectiles," Doctors Without Borders (MSF) President Loris De Filippi told a press conference in Rome.
    "It is an aberrant situation, created by Europe and left unsolved by Europe".