Hungary seals border, detains migrants
HORGOA, Serbia — Hungary sealed off its border with Serbia with massive coils of barbed wire Tuesday and began detaining migrants trying to use the country as a gateway to Western Europe, harsh new measures that left thousands of frustrated asylum-seekers piled up on the Serbian side of the border.
Human-rights activists condemned the move, with Amnesty International saying Hungary’s “intimidating show of militarized force is shocking.” But Prime Minister Viktor Orban defended the measures, saying he was acting to preserve Christian Europe, which he said had become threatened by the large numbers of Muslims streaming into the continent.
“The supply is nearly endless — we can see how many of them are coming,” Orban said in a televised address just before the new laws took effect at midnight. “And if we look at the demographics, we can see that these people have more children than our communi- ties who lead a traditional, Christian way of life.”
“Mathematics tells you that this will lead to a Europe where our way of life will end up in a minority, or at least face a very serious challenge.”
By nightfall Tuesday, thousands of migrants, including many babies and children, prepared to spend a night in the open or in flimsy tents erected in the bushes or on the main highway near the Serbian border with Hungary.
“I had hope until now, but it’s all gone,” lamented Mohammad Mahayni, a 32-year-old Syrian from Damascus, who became separated from his wife as they tried to enter Hungary a day earlier.
“I lifted the razor wire for her, she got in before a Hungarian border patrol came by,” he said.
The new laws make it a crime to breach or damage the four-metre-high razorwire fence erected along 180 kilometres of Hungary’s border with Serbia and include longer prison terms for convicted human traffickers. Authorities said they detained 174 people who tried to cross the border Tuesday. Hungary has said it will turn most of the migrants back to Serbia, which it considers a safe country where they could also request asylum.
The Hungarian government said it plans to extend the steel razor-wire fence — which it calls a “temporary border closure” — several kilometres along the border with Romania as well, something the Bucharest government said violated the “European spirit” of cooperation.