Hungary to hold migrants in border camps

HUNGARY yesterday approved plans to detain migrants in border camps in a step which the United Nations said violates European Union law and will have a “terrible physical and psychological impact” on asylum seekers.

The measures, passed by parliament, will also tighten controls on Hungary’s border, which has been a focal point of Europe’s migration crisis since 2015.

The southern border with Serbia marks the external frontier of the EU’s passport-free Schengen area and hundreds of thousands of people have crossed into the country. Viktor Orban, Hungary’s Prime Minister, sought to justify the move, saying the country had to act to defend itself and describing the influx of migrants – many fleeing conflict in the Middle East or Africa – as a “Trojan horse for terrorism”.

Mr Orban’s chief of staff said last month that two or three camps were planned along its southern border. Migrants whose applications are not immediately approved will not be allowed to move freely around Hungary but will be detained in camps that they can only leave outward, toward Serbia, according to the bill approved by parlia- ment. Cécile Pouilly, a UNHCR spokesman, said the move would effectively condemn asylum seekers, including children, to prolonged detention in shipping containers surrounded by barbed wire.

In expanding a five-mile ( 8km) zone along the border where summary expulsions have been the practice since last summer, police can now detain illegal migrants anywhere in the country and return them to the Serbian border to be expelled. “Nobody can step onto Hungarian or European Union soil without a permit,” Sandor Pinter, the interior minister, said in the bill.