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UN ‘shocked’ over Hungary action against refugees

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Ban says police’s use of tear gas and water cannon at crowds desperate to cross the border from Serbia “not acceptable”.

hungarian-riot-police

by Al Jazeera

The UN chief has said he was “shocked” after Hungarian riot police fired tear gas and water cannon at crowds of refugees desperate to cross the border from Serbia.

When asked about the border clashes on Wednesday, Ban Ki-moon said the treatment of the refugees by the Hungarian police was “not acceptable”.

Tensions boiled over at the Horgos-Roszke crossing where hundreds of furious people tore down the wire meshing separating them from Hungarian territory, and police clashed for hours with refugees, some of whom threw stones, sticks and plastic bottles.

The unrest left 14 Hungarian police officers injured, the authorities said.

Serbia lodged a formal protest with Hungary over the use of tear gas on its territory, and Nebojsa Stefanovic, interior minister, said police reinforcements were being sent to the Serbian side of the border to help calm tensions.

“We want to leave! We want to leave to Germany!” cried one French-speaking man at a protest at the border through a megaphone.

“Open the door!” he added in English, with hundreds echoing his call.

Children separated

In the chaos, at least four children were separated from their families and apparently taken by police to a nearby border control building, according to Amnesty International, the human rights organisation, said.

“The families are desperate to be reunited with their children,” Tirana Hassan, the crisis response director, said.

“Not only have they experienced the traumatic journey to the border and the use of force by the police – they have now lost the security of being with their parents.”

Large numbers of refugees camped out by the side of the road in the Serbian village of Horgos, close to the Hungarian border overnight into Thursday.

Some have tents while others lie under blankets to keep warm. Small groups gathered around makeshift fires after a night exposed to the elements.

The road leading to the closed border, that is protected by gates and barbed wire, bore the scars of Wednesday’s clashes. Scarred clothing and plastics could be seen stuck to the tarmac close to the border.

Under its new rules, Hungary said it had determined Serbia was “safe”, and therefore it could automatically deny asylum claims at the border.

Meanwhile, the Red Cross said on Thursday that several thousand people had entered Croatia in the last 24 hours, as refugees shifted their route through the Balkans after the Hungarian border closure.

“I cannot assess the exact figure, but it is surely several thousand people that entered the country,” said the local Red Cross spokesperson.

The last official police figure from Wednesday evening was around 1,500 people.

“We witnessed more inflow of people overnight,” she said.

Hungary declares state of emergency over refugee influx

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Police arrest almost 10,000 people for illegally crossing border with Serbia, as tough new asylum laws come into force.

Refugees waited on the Serbian side of the border between Serbia and Hungary after authorities closed the crossing [EPA]

Refugees waited on the Serbian side of the border between Serbia and Hungary after authorities closed the crossing [EPA]

by Al Jazeera

The Hungarian government has declared a state of emergency to cope with the influx of refugees, as almost 10,000 people were arrested on Monday for illegally crossing the border from Serbia, police said.

On Tuesday, police also detained at least 60 people claiming to be Syrian and Afghan refugees after they illegally crossed the border with Serbia, police spokeswoman Viktoria Csiszer-Kovacs said.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has indicated that asylum requests from refugees trying to enter Hungary from Serbia will be rejected because Serbia is a safe country where refugees do not risk war or persecution.

Meanwhile, Serbia was talking to the Hungarian government about the buildup of refugees on their frontier, a Serbian government minister said, adding Budapest would “have to open the border”.

Aleksandar Vulin, Serbia’s minister in charge of tackling the refugee crisis, did not elaborate.

UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said on Tuesday that it is likely that thousands of refugees will simply divert their route now that Hungary has closed its border with Serbia.

“We’re definitely in touch with different countries on contingencies and UNHCR is ready to move and assist different countries as best we can,” Fleming said.

“It’s going to be just as much a struggle as it has been for Macedonia and Greece.”

Over 200,000 refugees have reached Hungary so far in 2015, nearly all by walking across the southern border with Serbia.

Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Jamjoom, reporting from Roszke on the Hungary-Serbia border, said there were more soldiers and policemen than there were refugees at the crossing.

“We had heard that in the last 20 minutes there were a couple of dozens that crossed this way. They were probably going to the official border crossing which is about 2km from here.

“Although we understand from local officials that at that crossing, they are not letting refugees come into Hungary.

“There are at least a few hundred refugees begging authorities at that crossing point to let them to cross over into Hungary,” Jamjoom said.

On Tuesday, fewer refugees crossed into Austria from Hungary on Tuesday after Budapest started to clamp down on the flow through the Balkan peninsula to the richer countries of northern and western Europe, Austrian police said.

On Monday, the last day before Hungary sealed off its Serbian border with a razor wire fence, a record 15,700 people arrived in eastern Austria via the border town of Nickelsdorf.

“Yesterday 15,700 people crossed the border here at Nickelsdorf making it a day of record numbers. The night was a bit quieter,” Helmut Marban, from the regional Burgenland police, told Reuters news agency.

“We have had around 1,800 people from midnight until now,” adding that he did not expect the flow to ease despite Hungary now having closed its border with neighbouring Serbia,” he said.

Some 2,500 people spent the night in tents at the Austrian border, which had been set up by the country’s army.

Hungarian police said on Tuesday that two crossings on the border with Serbia have been closed to all traffic as stricter rules about the entry of migrants are applied.

“Since 12:30 the Hungarian border to Serbia has been closed. This means that no new migrants will be crossing the border there,” Marban said.

“But it is the case that we think that many thousand people were still on the go in Hungary before the border closed and they will surely make their way to Nickelsdorf here in Austria and try to continue their journey to Germany”.

Record number of refugees enter Hungary from Serbia

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More than 2,000 refugees crossed frontier on Monday, just days before Hungary completes a border fence.

After crossing Serbia, refugees enter Hungary to continue their journey to western and northern EU countries [EPA]

After crossing Serbia, refugees enter Hungary to continue their journey to western and northern EU countries [EPA]

by Al Jazeera

A record number of refugees streamed into EU member Hungary from Serbia, police said, just days before Hungary completes a border fence.

A total of 2,093 potential asylum seekers, the highest ever daily total, crossed the border near the Hungarian town of Roszke, a police statement said on Monday.

They were part of a wave of around 8,000 refugees whose journey to the European Union had been blocked last week when Macedonia declared a state of emergency and closed its borders after being overwhelmed by the huge influx of people, amid Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War II.

Many refugees said they had passed through Serbia after travelling through Macedonia’s border with Greece.

“We were stopped in Macedonia for two days, the riots were terrible, police used guns and tear gas, I saw an old woman beaten, her money and papers taken,” a 29-year-old IT engineer from Mosul in Iraq told the AFP news agency.

Al Jazeera’s Djordge Kostic, reporting near the border with Hungary, said an estimated 1,500 refugees are currently staying at 28 shelters set up by the UN and Russian-Serbian aid organisation in the city of Kanjiza.

He said the refugee situation at Kanjiza is “better organised” than in other parts of Serbia.

“There water, food, toilet and shower stalls provided to them. They even have Wi-Fi,” he said.

From there, the refugees can proceed to Horgos, about 12-km away, where they can take the train to Hungary, our correspondent said.

Meanwhile,Al Jazeera’s Aljosa Milenkovic, reporting from Presevo on the Serbia-Macedonia border, said more refugees were likely to come, “putting to test the region’s ability to cope with the large number of people transiting through”.

The latest movements came as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Fracois Hollande called for a unified system for the right to asylum, and the setting up of reception centres in Greece and Italy.

The issue is set to top the agenda at a summit of Balkan leaders on Thursday, which Merkel will attend.

Razor-wire fence

Hungary has registered more than 100,000 asylum seekers so far in 2015, over double the total for all of last year. In 2012, the figure was just 2,000.

The numbers have sharply increased to around 1,500 a day in August, after Hungary’s conservative government announced it would build a razor-wire fence along its southern border with Serbia.

In recent days, refugees have entered Hungary alongside a cross-border train track near Roszke, one of the few sections of the border with Serbia not yet blocked by three rolls of razor-wire, which the government says will completely seal off the border by August 31.

The fence is one of several measures making it more difficult for refugees to enter and stay in Hungary. The government is also tightening asylum laws, introducing penalties for illegal border-crossing, and the planned closure of permanent refugee camps.

About 102,000 “migrants” entered the EU via Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Montenegro or Kosovo between January and July this year, versus just 8,000 for the same period in 2014, according to EU border agency Frontex.

The number of refugees now making their way from Greece towards the EU is worrying many EU politicians and has left the Balkan countries struggling to cope with the humanitarian crisis.

Mass protests push Hungary to cancel controversial Internet Tax

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Prime Minister Viktor Orban scraps proposed tax after large-scale anti-government protests rock Budapest

Tens of thousands of Hungarians marched over the Danube River this week, protesting a proposed tax on Internet usage. (Photo: Janos Marjai/European Pressphoto Agency)

Tens of thousands of Hungarians marched over the Danube River this week, protesting a proposed tax on Internet usage. (Photo: Janos Marjai/European Pressphoto Agency)

by Deirdre Fulton, Common Dreams

Mass protests in Budapest this week against a proposed Internet usage tax apparently worked: Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Friday that his government would scrap the tax, at least for now.

“We are not Communists, we don’t govern against the people,” Mr. Orban said in his regular weekly interview on Hungarian radio. “We govern together with the people. So this tax, in this form, cannot be introduced.”

Protest organizers, who said the levy not only imposed a financial burden but threatened to restrict free speech, silence dissent, and access to information, celebrated the U-turn. “Mr. Orban admitted his defeat,” they said in a statement. “We are the people! And we the people have the right to rule the country.” A victory rally is planned for Friday evening.

The BBC‘s Nick Thorpe, writing from Budapest, noted that “Orban does not often back down, but he has done so on this occasion for several reasons.”

For one thing, the proposed tax of about 61 cents per gigabyte of data managed to unify those who are opposed to Orban and his ruling Fidesz party, which has been accused of authoritarian impulses. The reasons for the tax were poorly communicated, while opposition was well-organized. And Orban’s line about Communists, Thorpe said, is “a sign that growing comparisons between Fidesz and the old Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party are hitting the mark.”

“What happens next?” Thorpe wondered. “Mr. Orban’s decision to cancel the tax deprives his opponents of a valuable rallying cry. The big question for them will be whether they can use the momentum of two big rallies to create new forms of opposition to Fidesz. They have proven that he can be defeated. Mr. Orban has proven that he is more flexible than many analysts give him credit for.”

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