- Title: Migrants breathe fresh air as Hungary closes transit zones
- Date: 22nd May 2020
- Summary: ROSZKE, HUNGARY (FILE - MAY 2, 2019) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF BORDER GUARD CAR PATROLLING ALONG HUNGARY-SERBIA BORDER FENCE BORDER GUARD LOOKING OUT FROM WATCHTOWER SIGN ON FENCE READING (English): "CAUTION, ELECTRIC FENCE"
- Embargoed: 5th June 2020 14:57
- Keywords: Budapest ECJ EU ruling European Court of Justice Hungary Viktor Orban migrant camps migrant tranzit zones migrants
- Location: VAMOSSZABADI, ROSZKE, GARA AND BUDAPEST, HUNGARY
- City: VAMOSSZABADI, ROSZKE, GARA AND BUDAPEST, HUNGARY
- Country: Hungary
- Topics: Asylum/Immigration/Refugees,Government/Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA006CF0JC55
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Some of the around 300 migrants formerly held in conditions compared to prisons at Hungary's border with Serbia now have a taste of freedom in milder 'reception facilities' that allow a minimum of several hours of leave each day, playgrounds and access to information.
Hungary shut its so-called migrant transit zones on its borders on Thursday (May 21) following a ruling by the European Union's top court that four asylum seekers had effectively been detained and that a local court should release them immediately.
Although Budapest denounced the ruling, it said it would comply. Government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs told news channel Hir TV on Thursday that by closing the transit zones the government was closing "a loophole in our lines of defence" the ECJ ruling had opened up.
At the reception centre at Vamosszabadi on Friday (May 22) Wesam al-Hadrami, a migrant and engineering student from Yemen, said he felt like "running for kilometres" after being allowed out for a walk near the centre saying it was the first time he had been allowed to go outside in nine months.
Al-Hadrami said the camp where he had been was "basically like a prison" and that authorities had told them they were free to go - as long as it was to Serbia.
During the peak of Europe's 2015 migration crisis, Prime Minister Viktor Orban ordered Hungary's southern border to be sealed, blocking a route for hundreds of thousands of migrants.
Some were stuck in the transit zones, areas of several hundred square meters on the border between Hungary and Serbia with shipping containers for lodging and surrounded by heavily-guarded barbed wire perimeters, for a year or more.
As the zones' closure was announced, Orban's chief of staff Gergely Gulyas said Hungary was working on changing its asylum law so that requests could only be submitted at its embassies overseas, not at or within its borders.
Marta Pardavi, co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, which had sued Orban's government over the transit zones, said she doubted that would be legal under EU rules. "There will probably another long-standing dispute" she said.
(Production: Balazs Kaufmann, Krisztina Fenyo) - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2020. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None