- Title: EUROPE-MIGRANTS/HUNGARY Hungarians divided as border fence construction begins
- Date: 4th August 2015
- Summary: ASOTTHALOM, HUNGARY (AUGUST 3, 2015) (REUTERS) SIGN READING (Hungarian/English/German): 'STATE BORDER' ON SAMPLE FENCE VARIOUS OF CONSTRUCTION WORK OF BORDER FENCE GROUP OF MIGRANTS GOING INTO WOODS NEAR FENCE CONSTRUCTION SITE SZEGED, HUNGARY (RECENT, 2015) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF MIGRANTS GATHERED OUTSIDE RAILWAY STATION VARIOUS OF CIVIL AID ORGANISATION 'MIGSZOL' GIVING TE
- Embargoed: 19th August 2015 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Hungary
- Country: Hungary
- Topics: General
- Reuters ID: LVA9X4QWBLNJCMULHY59RKLMAXGO
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Every day, some 1,500 mostly Afghan and Syrian refugees stream through the woods from Serbia into Hungary.
Detained by police for registration, then set free and told to report to asylum centres, most make a beeline for the West instead, adding to the European Union's growing migrant crisis.
The vulnerability of a border-free Europe is exposed at external frontiers like this dense forest where thousands of Middle Eastern migrants, often fleeing violence at home, cross into the EU's Schengen zone of passport-free travel.
Hungary's leaders have tried to shut down the growing flow.
Construction began this week on a 175-kilometre (110 mile) razor-wire border fence to deter migrants. Asylum laws were tightened to allow swift deportation. And Hungary has started refusing to take back migrants from other EU countries even when the bloc's rules would require it.
While Hungary is an avenue rather than a destination for the migrants, the central European country is increasingly weary and polarised as the influx grows. Conflicts have begun to appear, and the government is taking an ever harder line.
Several volunteer groups have taken to social media such as Facebook to show that hatred can be reduced and tensions defused by helping migrants. Some hand out water, food, information and offer basic services mostly at train stations.
In Szeged, a group named MigSzol (Migration Services) runs a wooden hut outside the train station that has quickly become a busy service station for the migrants - and a target of abuse by people who resent them.
The activists have settled into a routine: migrants arrive in police buses, eat, drink, clean up, rest, charge phones and get basic information, then board a Budapest-bound train. The plaza is cleaned with bleach, then the next bus arrives.
"I think we are basically doing work that shouldn't be up to volunteers to do, but we do it because nobody else will, therefore we created this group because if nobody will do it then the problem will get bigger. So we thought that we have a task to do here, to give food to the hungry, water to the thirsty, to give a smile. I think this is a time to act," MigSzol co-founder Agnes Szoke-Toth said.
Hate crimes have remained limited so far, with sporadic instances of fights and thefts.
Populist right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban has justified that stance by conflating immigration with terrorism, increased crime and unemployment, adding that Hungary will act on its own because the EU offers no solution.
Emboldened by televised scenes of migrants trying to force their way into the Channel Tunnel to enter Britain from France, Orban has invoked former French President Nicolas Sarkozy's warnings of a massive flow of migration expected from the south.
Some of the migrants in Calais likely came through Hungary, where new arrivals often say they aim to move on to Britain.
"I was not happy to leave my country but I had real reasons to do so because of danger, but I was not happy to leave, but had to," one Iraqi, who gave his name only as Jusef, said.
Along with dozens of other migrants, Jusef had just got out of an asylum centre in Szeged, the largest city near the border where the migrants board trains bound for Budapest.
Several said they made a last-ditch effort to get to Hungary before it completes the border fence and migrants are trapped in non-EU Serbia, expected to become a new bottleneck in the migration wave.
Camping out in woodland and train stations, sleeping on city streets, including in Budapest, the migrants leave behind a stream of trash - discarded transit papers in Greek and Serbian with the photos removed, but also bras, candy wrappers, tubs of hair gel.
Angry locals near the border said their lives have changed with the migrant influx.
One Hungarian woman in her fifties, Olga, lives within earshot of the border. Migrants have done her no harm but she still views them with suspicion and resentment.
"My dogs bark all night, we cannot rest because of them and I'm afraid to leave my windows open because one never knows, it is better to be afraid than scared, you know," she said.
As the influx has grown Hungarians have divided between those urging more government help for migrants and others demanding a tougher government crackdown.
Last month a fringe far-right movement organised a protest at a Budapest railway terminus against what they called "African hordes" and threatening to take matters into their own hands if the government did not stop migrants.
"It's not going to be good for them here, they should not come here, they should go to other countries, if Germany and Sweden think that it is good for them that 1,000 Swedish women are raped in a few years then they should do it, but we do not want one of ours raped," Gyorgy Zagyva, a former lawmaker from the far-right Jobbik party and a leader of the fringe group, told about 300 rowdy protesters.
Critics say the government's inflammatory rhetoric fans the flames and is aimed at making political gains for the ruling Fidesz party instead of tackling the problem.
Analyst Peter Kreko of the Political Capital Institute, an independent think-tank, said the government's action might be justified since the problem was real, but its rhetoric showed its main motivation was political gain, not problem solving.
He added that the far-right Jobbik party sometimes seemed to set the agenda of the government's rhetoric and policy.
"What Jobbik does today can be what the government does tomorrow. And in the overall immigration debate, especially regarding the rhetorics that the government uses, I think Jobbik really served as a model," he said.
The Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a rights group, said the government inflates the problem by highlighting that nearly 100,000 migrants have arrived in Hungary so far this year, more than double the 43,000 in the whole of 2014.
The legal amendments, the border fence and the refusal to take back migrants from elsewhere in the EU could quickly drain Hungary of most migrants, according to the Helsinki Committee. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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