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​Hungary to detain all asylum seekers in container camps ​Hungary to detain all asylum seekers in container camps
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Hungary’s parliament has approved the automatic detention of all asylum seekers in container camps on the southern borders, dismissing concerns from human rights groups. Hungary’s parliament has overwhelmingly backed measures to force all asylum seekers into detention camps on its southern borders as the country’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, called migration “a Trojan horse for terrorism”.
The legislation, approved by a large majority of politicians, was created in response to recent terrorist attacks in Europe carried out by migrants, the hardline prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has said. The asylum seekers will be kept in converted shipping containers while they wait for their cases to be heard via video-link as part of measures Orbán said were designed to save Europe.
Speaking at a swearing-in of the latest contingent of 450 new border police in Budapest on Tuesday, Orbán called immigration “the Trojan horse of terrorism”. “If the world sees that we can defend our borders ... then no one will try to come to Hungary illegally,” he added. The measure, fiercely opposed by civil liberties groups in the country and some socialist MPs, was passed by 138 votes to six with 22 abstentions.
Hungary previously systematically detained all asylum applicants but suspended the practice in 2013 under pressure from Brussels, the UN refugee agency and the European court of human rights. Asylum seekers in Hungary, which hundreds of thousands entered in 2015 in the hope of reaching western Europe, can at present be held for up to four weeks if they are apprehended within five miles of the border, but the new rules remove the time limit and will apply countrywide. Unaccompanied minors below the age of 14 will be put in the care of the country’s child protection services.
The UNHCR said the legislation “violates Hungary’s obligations under international and EU laws, and will have a terrible physical and psychological impact on women, children and men who have already greatly suffered.” The Hungarian government stressed that any detained asylum seekers would be free to leave at any point, as long as they drop their claim and return to either Serbia or Croatia, the two countries through which refugees have mainly been arriving.
The local branch of the Helsinki committee said it was the “last stepping stone in completely disregarding [Hungary’s] asylum obligations under EU and international law and trampling the rights of asylum seekers.” The law, due to come into force in a week, will also require asylum seekers to have their fingerprints and photographs taken, or be thrown out of the country for non-cooperation. It also makes it easier to declare a state of emergency designed to ensure that no one can enter Hungary and the EU without permission.
All asylum seekers entering Hungary, as well as those already in the country, will be detained or moved to the container camps. They will not be able to move around Hungary or leave the country while their applications are processed, unless they are going back over the border to Serbia. A total of 391,000 people arrived in Hungary illegally across the green border in 2015, the Hungarian government claims, of whom 177,000 submitted requests for asylum but only 5,000 waited until their asylum proceedings were completed.
“In the future, illegal immigrants must wait for the verdict on their asylum case in designated transit zones at the border,” said the bill, published on the parliament website. A consortium of seven civil rights groups voiced protest against the new asylum regulations, including Amnesty International, which said the proposals would breach EU law and the refugee convention.
It reinstated Hungary’s practice of detaining asylum applicants, which it suspended in 2013 under pressure from the European Union, the UN refugee agency and the European court of human rights. There have also been claims, rejected by the government, in the Swedish press that the Hungarian border guards have been attacking asylum seekers. Media access to the camps is restricted.
Amnesty International said last month that the new rules “disregard EU guiding principles that it is forbidden to detain someone on the basis that they have claimed asylum”. Orbán said at an oath-taking ceremony for “border-hunter” police on Tuesday that the arrival of asylum seekers might have ebbed since 2015 but it had not come to an end.
The bill is the latest element of a tough anti-immigration stance by Orbán, which has long been criticised by rights groups as inhumane. “We are still under attack,” Orbán insisted. “The pressure on Hungary’s borders will not cease in the next few years because millions more people are preparing to set off in the hope of a better life. The storm has not blown itself out.”
As well as building militarised razor-wire fences on its borders with Serbia and Croatia in 2015, Hungary has handed thousands of asylum seekers expulsion orders for “illegal border-crossing” and even jailed some. Orbán said Hungary had to act on its own since the migration crisis would last until its causes are removed and the EU could not be relied upon to do so. “It will remain on the agenda until it is recognised everywhere that migration is a Trojan horse for terrorism.”
It has also gradually been closing down its network of refugee camps, while allowing only a trickle of asylum seekers into the existing “transit zones”. The refugees are expected to be kept at two or three camps on Hungary’s southern border.
According to the government, 1,004 people have applied for asylum in Hungary so far this year. Officials say the new border camps will comprise converted shipping containers built onto existing “transit zones” erected in 2015 at the southern border with Serbia. In addition, Hungary is pressing ahead with a second electrified fence along the Serbian-Hungarian border due to be completed by 1 May. The new barrier, stretching for nearly 100 miles (150km), will enable the border to be monitored using CCTV and thermal cameras, and other technological equipment.
The government says asylum seekers have been abusing the previous rules and leaving Hungary before a verdict is reached, exposing the bloc to the risk of terror attacks. A government spokesman said: “Thanks to the new technology, a low voltage, and completely safe current will also be flowing through the fence, which will send an alarm to border control authorities if any attempts are made to damage the fence.
“Any legal regulation that facilitates terror acts must be changed in the interests of our own self-defence,” Orbán said in January. The 53-year-old Orbán, a strong admirer of the US president, Donald Trump, has long taken a hard line on immigration. “The goal to be realised by the fence is exactly what the Austrians want too, that nobody is able to cross the border who will need to be sent back later because they are in the EU illegally.”
He has said that a large influx of Muslim migrants into Europe poses a security risk and endangers the continent’s Christian culture and identity. Gauri van Gulik, Amnesty International’s deputy director for Europe, said: “Rounding up all men, women and children seeking asylum and detaining them months on end in container camps is a new low in Hungary’s race to the bottom on asylum seekers and refugees.”
Budapest has refused to take part in an EU scheme to share around the EU the hundreds of thousands of migrants who entered the bloc in recent years.
Another change in law last year enabled police to physically push back to Serbia anyone caught in Hungarian territory within five miles (8km) of the border.
In Monday the interior ministry was forced to defend police against accusations of brutality against refugees and migrants, made in a newspaper article by medical aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières . The ministry “repeatedly and categorically rejects the unverified allegations”, said a statement.