Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
border
Migrants and refugees walk near razor-wire along a 3-meter-high fence at the border crossing
between Serbia and Hungary (AFP)
Refugees, including many children, walk near the Greece Macedonia border (MEE / Ilir Tsouko)
point.
"There are two pre-registration centres, full of people and the conditions in which
people live are not decent at all, he said.
Last week, disturbing images emerged of Hungarian security officials throwing
bags of food to cooped up refugees and migrants. The Austrian volunteer who
filmed the scenes said that the refugees and migrants were being treated like
animals.
Most of those who enter Hungary try to avoid registration in the camps and prefer
to pass through to neighbouring Austria from where they often make their way
further north - undetected.
They [the refugees and migrants] should be in the country from 36 to 48 hours,
but since the numbers are too large to be managed with dignity, they stay longer,
said Vihe.
There are no enough interpreters and we have serious language and
communicative problems.
We are also very concerned for the management of the medical emergency.
Currently, there is still not a hygiene emergency, but our fear is that there may
soon be one. It would be a disaster. Europe's actions are proving inadequate and
deficient.
Overwhelming influx
The EU's border agency Frontex said that a "large number of the migrants arriving
in Greece make their way towards Hungary, where the number of detections at its
border with Serbia increased 20-fold to more than 52,000 in August, bringing the
number so far this year to more than 155,000."
Hungary, however, has disputed these figures. Gyorgy Bakondi, homeland security
adviser to the Hungarian prime minister, said on Tuesday that 171,000 people
have claimed asylum in Hungary in the last three months alone, the Guardian
reported.
Of this, 300 asylum claims have been granted and 4,000 people have been
deported. A further 65,000 claims ended when the applicants disappeared and
another 95,000 claims are still being processed, he said.
Budapest says it simply cannot handle the influx any longer.
It has now announced plans to build a fence to keep migrants out along part of its
border with Romania, in addition to the barrier being erected along the frontier
with Serbia, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said.
"The measure is necessary as people-smugglers may change their routes because
of the existing fence on the Hungary-Serbia border, hence a part of the
immigration pressure may get directed towards Romania," Szijjarto told a press
conference in Budapest.
The announcement has sparked concern in neighbouring Croatia which now fears
it will become the next hot destination for migrants as refugees as other betterestablished routes become blocked off.
"It is a system of spilling over ... if they [migrants] cannot go somewhere, there is a
realistic possibility that they will head in our direction," Zlatko Sokolar, head of the
interior ministry's border administration, told state-run HRT radio.
Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has enacted one of the EUs most liberal policies
toward refugees.
However, an apparent U-turn by Germany over the weekend saw Berlin reinstate
controls on its border with Austria and temporarily suspended the free-border
Schengen agreement.
The move has sparked concern that German generosity could have reached its
limits and that border states like Greece, Italy and Hungary will be forces to fend
for themselves.
On Monday, the EU failed to reach a deal on mandatory quotas for refugees.
Germany, Austria and Slovakia have since called for a special European summit
next week. Merkel has warned that "time is running out" to find a solution to the
crisis, but it is unclear if Eastern European states that were instrumental in
sinking Mondays proposals will heed her calls to do more.
Additional reporting by Simona Sikimic in London
Posted by Thavam