Hungary locks down border
Prime Minister Viktor Orban says he is acting to save Europe’s ‘Christian values’ by blocking the main overland route to Europe
SERBIAN-HUNGARIAN BORDER: Hungary’s right-wing government shut the main land route for refugees into the EU yesterday, taking matters into its own hands to halt Europe’s unprecedented influx of them while the bloc failed to agree a plan to distribute them.
Crowds of refugees built up at Serbia’s northern border with Hungary, their passage blocked by a razor wire fence.
Under new rules that took effect from midnight, Hungary says anyone seeking asylum at the Serbian border will automatically be turned back. Anyone trying to sneak through will face jail.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban, one of the continent’s loudest opponents of mass immigration, says he is acting to save Europe’s “Christian values” by blocking the main overland route used by mainly Muslim refugees, through the Balkans and across his country via its border with Serbia.
In scenes with echoes of the Cold War, families with small children sat in fields beneath the former communist country’s new 3.5m high fence, which runs almost the length of the border.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been arriving at the EU’s southern and eastern edges and making their way to the richer countries further north and west, in the greatest migration to Western Europe since World War II.
With emergency talks having failed to break a deadlock over an EU plan to force member countries to accept quotas of refugees, Germany’s interior minister said the bloc should consider imposing financial penalties on countries that refuse.
Record arrivals forced Germany and several neighbours to reimpose emergency frontier controls this week, unravelling two decades of borderless travel within the 26-member Schengen zone, one of the EU’s flagship achievements.
Germany and other relatively open countries say Europe has a moral obligation to accept refugees and other EU states must do their part. Eastern European countries in particular argue that a more welcoming stance only encourages more people to make dangerous voyages, and risks attracting an uncontrolled influx of millions.
Under its new rules, Hungary said it would now automatically turn back refugees who arrive by land at its border with Serbia, which it has declared “safe”, meaning those crossing from it cannot claim asylum. Asylum claims would be processed within eight days, and those at the Serbian border should be rejected within hours.
“If someone is a refugee, we will ask them whether they have submitted an asylum request in Serbia. If they had not done so, given that Serbia is a safe country, they will be rejected,” Orban was quoted as telling private broadcaster TV2 on Monday.
“We will start a new era,” government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said shortly after midnight on the border. “We will stop the inflow of illegal refugees over our green borders.”
Long queues formed in noman’s land at metal containers built into the fence, where refugees were expected to register, though only a handful were seen entering. They had spent the night in the open, and were given tents, food and water by aid workers.
Nine Syrians and seven Afghans were detained by police and face possible imprisonment on suspicion of breaching the fence, the first arrests under the new rules.