EUROPE-MIGRANTS/SERBIA-FENCE Hungarian fence creates new front in Europe's migrant crisis

Record ID: 145710

  • Title: EUROPE-MIGRANTS/SERBIA-FENCE Hungarian fence creates new front in Europe's migrant crisis
  • Date: 30th July 2015
  • Summary: SUBOTICA, SERBIA (JULY 27, 2015) (REUTERS) DESERTED BRICKYARD WITH TOWN DUMP BEHIND PART OF DESERTED BRICKYARD WRITING ON WALL VARIOUS OF MIGRANTS SLEEPING ON FLOOR INSIDE MIGRANTS WALKING INSIDE BRICKYARD COMPOUND MIGRANT WOMAN SITTING MIGRANTS WALKING MIGRANT CAMP MIGRANTS SITTING NEXT TO TENTS MIGRANTS SITTING ON GROUND GROUP OF MIGRANTS SITTING NEXT TO TENTS WOMAN WITH
  • Embargoed: 14th August 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Serbia
  • Country: Serbia
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA4SUTGB069EQR1FS1NCYG3MCXH
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: In the scrubland around an old brick factory in northern Serbia, Syrians and Afghans rest in the shade of the trees amid the rubbish of those who came before them, waiting for nightfall to walk across the nearby Hungarian border and into the European Union. Every day, a medical team from Medecins Sans Frontieres comes to the border to provide medical assistance to the migrants worn out by their journey, which can last for months before they reach the relative safety of European shores.
    One man who came from war-torn Syria said his goal is to find education and a job - and escape the violence.
    "I will go to Hungary, after that to Austria, after that to Germany, because I want to go to university," said the man, who appeared to be in his twenties.
    "In Syria there is problems, everywhere in Syria there is problems. There is Assad's army, ISIS, Al Qaeda, I don't know."
    A month from now Hungary says it will seal its border with Serbia with a four-metre high, 175-km barrier to keep out migrants streaming through the Balkans, fleeing war, poverty and upheaval in the Middle East and Africa for a better life in western Europe.
    The move, with its Cold War echoes in ex-Communist eastern Europe, threatens Serbia with disaster, creating a new migrant bottleneck on Europe's fringes in a country woefully ill-equipped to cope.
    One migration expert compared the likely outcome to the French port of Calais, where nine migrants are believed to have died since June trying to breach the entrance to the tunnel than runs under the channel to Britain.
    But Serbia "will be on a far greater scale," said Rados Djurovic, head of the Asylum Protection Centre, a local non-governmental organisation.
    In Calais, some 3,000 migrants are camped out trying to cross the water to Britain; in the Balkans, well over 100,000 are believed to have entered illegally into Hungary so far this year.
    While the fence is unlikely to stop many of them, it will slow them down, likely creating vast squats in northern Serbia as winter approaches and temperatures begin to fall below freezing. Migrants are entering Serbia from its southern neighbour Macedonia at a rate of over 1,000 per day.
    Djurovic said that while some may instead go east into Romania or west into Croatia, neither EU member is part of the borderless Schengen zone that makes Hungary so attractive, so many migrants are likely to bide their time in Serbia before finding a way through.
    Under EU rules, if a migrant enters Croatia or Romania, that's where he or she will be returned to if caught elsewhere in the bloc, putting them again outside the Schengen zone.
    So far this year, over 93,000 have applied for asylum in Hungary, before slipping the net of authorities and heading west for the more affluent countries of western and northern Europe, most often Germany. Many more are believed to have made the trip unnoticed.
    "They go first of all to the countries of north and western Europe, first of all to Germany, Austria, Sweden, Norway, some are going to Benelux countries, and just a small number go to Great Britain," Djurovic said.
    Aleksandar Vulin, the Serbian government minister tasked with dealing with the problem, told Reuters: "I'm afraid we are going to face a humanitarian catastrophe when thousands of people who want to leave Serbia physically will not be able to."
    The government says it is spending 15,000 euros per day in direct support for the migrants, and has opened a new reception centre in the south.
    But there is scant evidence of aid in the northern town of Subotica, where dozens of migrants this week slept on the filthy floors of an abandoned, 100-year-old brick factory and in the surrounding scrubland, washing themselves and their clothes at roadside taps.
    Overwhelmingly poor and socially conservative, Serbian society has been taken by surprise by the sudden surge in Middle Eastern, African and Asian migrants; the government fears a strain on social harmony and its own meagre coffers.
    Djurovic warned migrants face being pushed into a grey zone of illegality the longer they remain in Serbia, preyed on by corrupt police officers and organised crime gangs.
    Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose rightist policies have frequently put him at odds with his EU peers, says the bloc's migration policy is broken and the influx of mainly Muslim foreigners risks distorting its identity. He wants the fence finished by August 31.
    Vulin said Serbia was appealing to the EU, which Belgrade wants to join, to help with the likely consequences, but complained that the bloc was dragging its feet.
    EU officials dismissed the criticism, saying the bloc was finalising a support programme of eight million euros for the western Balkans and Turkey beginning in September. A spokeswoman said Serbia would also be entitled to ask for short-term humanitarian financial aid as it did so in 2014 during devastating floods.
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