Hungary’s migrant crisis escalated Wednesday as police fired teargas at its main processing center and the government announced it was sending 2,000 “border hunters” to stem the flow of record numbers of people entering from Serbia. Meanwhile, a record 2,533 migrants were caught while entering Hungary from Serbia on Tuesday – the highest number of the year.
Advertisement
“The European Commission put forward in May a proposal which is a thoroughly fair one, in my view, that there has to be a fair allocation across the borders of Europe of people who are being taken in and should be offered sanction”.
Saeed, 32, from Syria said of the blocked border: ‘We know this was not Macedonia and the Macedonian police.
Hungary’s police chief commissioner Karoly Papp said the force was readying six special border patrol units of an initial 2,106 officers, equipped with helicopters, horses and dogs, to be sent in, depending on the Serbian border situation.
Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden are all under scrutiny.
“If I get fingerprinted in Hungary, I don’t go to Germany”, explained Abdul Majed, a 25-year-old language student from Syria.
Serbia will never close its borders to migrants, Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic has said.
Exhausted migrants by the thousands, some pushed in wheelchairs or on wheelbarrows, others hobbling on crutches or carrying young children, crossed on foot from Macedonia into Serbia on Monday as they sought to reach Western Europe.
“While understanding legitimate concerns facing countries in the region – obviously this is an unexpected large number of people – we do appeal to the governments involved to implement border management measures with humanity and also in accordance with global obligations”.
Greece, embroiled in a debilitating economic crisis, is ferrying them from overwhelmed islands to the mainland, from where they head north to Macedonia and points beyond.
A record 50,000, many of them Syrians, reached Greek shores by boat from Turkey in July.
As Europe struggles with its worst migrant crisis since World War II, Hungary has become – like Italy and Greece – a “front line” state and numerous hundreds of thousands of people trying to enter the bloc travel up through the western Balkans.
Ms Merkel’s move to admit more migrants also comes in the face of what she has called a “vile” wave of antimigrant protests and violence. In the first half of this year, Hungary took back 718 asylum seekers, compared with 19,284 migrants EU governments wanted to send back.
Hungary, beleaguered by the influx and facing a right-wing backlash, has been rushing to build the fence both as a physical barrier and a symbol of its tough anti-foreigner stance.
Christoph Sander, a spokesperson for the BAMF, told the Associated Press that the new guidance isn’t legally binding and that only 131 Syrians had been deported between January and June anyway, while Johannes Dimroth, a spokesperson for German Interior Ministry, explained to the Wall Street Journal that the Dublin procedure had been inefficient and resulted in too much paperwork.
Advertisement
The issue is set to top the agenda at a summit of Balkan leaders on Thursday, which Merkel will attend.
