Already Unwelcoming, Hungary Now Detains Asylum Seekers
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Version 0 of 1. HORGOS, Serbia — Double rows of razor-wire fences. High-tech watch towers equipped with search lights, motion sensors, cameras and loudspeakers. Hungary’s border with Serbia, specially fortified in the last two years to keep out migrants and refugees, is anything but a welcome mat. Now, add to those deterrents detention camps — small container villages surrounded by razor wire, with a tiny playground for children. Hungary, which already had one of the toughest immigration policies in the European Union, last month rolled out a draconian new asylum procedure that will reduce applicants to a trickle — 10 people a day — and essentially put them in prison camps for months while their cases are decided. Even after that, if the recent past holds true, more than 90 percent are likely to be rejected. By May, several hundred asylum seekers already in Hungary may also be relocated to the detention camps, evoking ugly and unavoidable echoes of rounding up Jews, Roma and others during World War II. But if Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, provoked a loud outcry from his European peers by slapping up a razor-wire border fence two years ago as hundreds of thousands of migrants flooded into Europe, this time the condemnation, at least from his political peers, is more muted. It is a measure of just how much the winds have shifted in his favor and against asylum seekers in Europe as nationalist, populist, far-right movements present a potent threat in a year filled with important elections, next in France and Germany. If anything these days, Mr. Orban feels a sense of vindication and insists that the rest of Europe is coming around to his approach. He may be right. Vast crowds of migrants, like those in the chaotic scenes at Hungary’s border with Serbia in 2015, are a thing of the past. Frontex, the European Union’s external border control agency, has stepped up boat patrols in the Mediterranean to choke off the flow of migrants, particularly from Turkey to Greece. The Greek authorities are holding thousands of migrants who crossed last year at camps on Greek islands, under sometimes difficult conditions, while their asylum applications are processed. All of these measures have effectively squelched much of the traffic along the so-called Balkan route used by an estimated 764,000 migrants to enter Europe in 2015. In the first two months of this year, only 2,448 people tried to cross illegally using the same route, Frontex said. “The Balkan route is basically closed,” said Erno Simon, a spokesman for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Budapest. If that message has not already been received, Hungary’s new policies are intended to make it crystal clear. The Orban government is training thousands of new “border hunters,” even amid persistent charges of Hungarian police officers’ brutalizing migrants. The charges mirror complaints in Bulgaria, Croatia and other states on the fringe of the European Union. Under Hungary’s new procedure, asylum seekers will be detained in two transit zones and housed in trailers. Capacity is currently about 500, with room to grow. Hungary has steadily cut the number allowed into the transit zones from Serbia, citing processing capacity and the need for more stringent security checks to make sure no terrorists slip through. The number allowed in will now be limited to five people a day at each of the two camps, and only on weekdays — a total of 50 people per week — with families given priority. “They have done everything in their power to deter people from coming in and to make it difficult for people who do get in,” said Lydia Gall, a Budapest lawyer and researcher for Human Rights Watch. But Balazs Orban, head of research at Szazadveg Group, a pro-government research organization, says there are signs that Western leaders are starting to believe that the prime minister’s tough approach two years ago was the proper one. He pointed to the agreement in principle at a European Union meeting in Malta this year to set up a big refugee camp in Libya, to hold asylum seekers while their cases are decided. That follows essentially the same principle as Hungary’s transit zones, said Mr. Orban, no relation to the prime minister. “The migrant pressure will be so huge in the next decade, we must create a system that stops them at the border,” he added. “What the Germans did, allowing a million migrants into their country, is against common sense,” Mr. Orban said. “But what the Hungarians did is in line with common sense. More people are beginning to realize this.” In a recent interview on state radio, Viktor Orban said, “Whoever is right before all the others is considered to be a heretic.” That doesn’t necessarily mean that refugees and economic migrants will stop coming. An estimated 8,000 asylum seekers now wait in Serbia for permission to cross into Hungary. Hundreds more hide in forests and in informal camps, hoping for an opportunity to cross illegally. Many more are expected as the weather warms. “I do not try to cross illegally,” said Mohammed Wafa Sekendari, who left Afghanistan with his family a year and a half ago hoping for a fresh life in Europe, only to end up in a tent camp just feet from the entrance to one of Hungary’s new transit zones. “I want to do everything legal, to follow all the rules, so when I arrive in Germany, my family and I no longer need to hide,” he said. Mr. Orban denies charges from refugee advocates that Hungary’s new policy violates international law and European Union rules. But his government has strictly controlled access to the camps and would not allow journalists to enter, saying that it was only safeguarding the refugees’ privacy. In most countries, asylum seekers are usually allowed to come and go freely, even if housed in immigration centers. Previously, that was the case in Hungary, too, though many walked away, continuing their journey to Western Europe. In that regard, Mr. Orban’s tougher new policy has taken the migratory pressure off his European Union partners, while allowing them to condemn him anyway. As for the several hundred asylum seekers already living in Hungary, government officials say they will be taken to the new border camps as well. “If they come for me, they come,” said Nazari Khalid, 22, an Afghan who arrived in Hungary a year ago and lives in a homeless shelter in Budapest. “I don’t care. Here in Hungary, you get no money, no food, no work. At least in jail they give you food.” For those who try crossing illegally, the costs — and the chance of capture — have risen. Human smugglers now charge $2,000 or more to get from Belgrade, Serbia, to Budapest. In 2015, the cost was about $400. Today, about 150 people live in a camp outside Subotica, one of 17 such camps in Serbia where refugees must come to get their names put on a list to be allowed into Hungary. Every Friday, Hungarian officials hand across the border to their Serbian counterparts an orderly schedule for the following week, handwritten on a torn sheet of notebook paper, detailing which refugee families will be admitted to which transit zone on which day. But with only 10 people admitted per day, and thousands still waiting in Serbia, refugee officials are worried. “We are preparing for big problems this summer when the Hungarians start rejecting applications under the new system and pushing back these families,” said Norbert Gyori, one of the Serbian officials running the Subotica camp. Among the lucky ones on a recent day were Mr. Sekendari and four of his children, who arrived at a transit zone with their tattered possessions after being given a day’s notice. He became separated from his wife and two other children more than a year ago at the Turkish border and hasn’t heard from them since. He hopes they are waiting for him in Germany. One recent morning, a Hungarian official appeared at a nearby fence and called out. “It is time,” Mr. Sekendari said to his children. Slowly, they moved single-file across the sandy ground toward a metal turnstile at the edge of the transit zone. One by one, they disappeared over the border. None of them looked back. |