DailyMail.com :
(From previous issue)
The result of the decision to arrest those breaking the border was plain to see, with the number of people intercepted falling to just 367 yesterday from a record 9,380 the day before. Hungary is understood to have a further 1,000 prison spaces ready to be allocated to those breaking through the border.
Overnight, Hungarian authorities positioned barbed wire and a new gate at the border where the clashes occurred, which was at one of two border crossings near the Serbian village of Horgos. Early yesterday hundreds of migrants remained at the two border crossings, but their numbers dwindled as many of them headed toward the Croatian border. Serbian state TV reported that 70 buses transported people overnight to the border with Croatia. Overnight Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban reinforced his view that by blocking the predominately Syrian and Afghan refugees, the border police are defending ‘Europe’s Christian culture’ from being overrun by Muslims.
Yesterday David Miliband, the chief of the International Rescue Committee and brother of former Labour leader Ed, said events on the Serbia-Hungarian border revealed the ‘dark side of the European character’.
‘Anyone with an ounce of morality feels appalled by what’s happening in parts of Europe,’ he added in an interview with the Associated Press. Anyone with an ounce of morality feels appalled by what’s happening in parts of Europe…[it is] a dark side of the European character.
While lauding German leadership in tackling Europe’s migrant crisis, the former British foreign secretary said that Hungary’s decision to erect a razor-wire fence to stop the influx of migrants was ‘misguided and short-sighted, and when it’s combined with bullyboy tactics it’s obviously appalling.’
Serbian doctors say two people were seriously injured and up to 300 have sought medical help after Hungarian police used tear gas and water cannons to stop migrants from entering Hungary. In the last few months, Hungary has become a main entry point and bottleneck into the European Union for migrants, many of them war refugees from Syria, Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. More than 200,000 migrants have entered Hungary so far in 2015, nearly all by walking across the southern border with Serbia, as they make their way to Germany or other wealthy Western European nations. Miliband’s comments came two days after the 28-nation EU failed to come up with a united immigration policy at a contentious meeting in Brussels.
Ministers did agree to share responsibility for 40,000 people seeking refuge in overwhelmed Italy and Greece and spoke hopefully of reaching an eventual deal on which EU nations would take 120,000 more refugees, including some from Hungary. The IRC boss called the EU failure ‘disappointing in all kinds of ways,’ but said Europe has no choice but to find another solution. ‘Kicking this can down the road, kicking these people down the road is obviously no answer,’ Miliband said.
During yesterday’s clashes at the Hungary-Serbia border, 29 people were detained – including a man identified by officials as a ‘terrorist’. Hungary’s decision this week to shut the EU’s external border with Serbia was the most forceful attempt yet by a European country to reduce the flood of refugees and economic migrants overwhelming the bloc.
As thousands of migrants scattered across the Balkan peninsula tried to reach the EU, Hungary’s prime minister said his country planned to put up a fence along parts of its border with Croatia and on the frontier with Romania to stem the flow.
Helmeted riot police backed by armoured vehicles took up positions at the barricaded border crossing with Serbia, where male migrant youths pelted them with stones, demanding entry.
Three Hungarian military Humvees, mounted with guns, also arrived at the border. Hungary said it detained a ‘terrorist’ among 29 migrants held during the clashes. At least 20 policemen and two children were injured, a Hungarian security official said. ‘Police also captured an identified terrorist,’ Gyorgy Bakondi, a security adviser to the Hungarian Prime Minister told state television M1. A government spokesman said the man was ‘in the database of security services’.
‘It is getting very ugly there,’ said Ahmad, 58, a shopkeeper from Baghdad who went to the official border crossing at Sid in Serbia but realised he may have a better chance of entering the EU via Serbia’s border with Croatia.
‘As soon as we heard about a route to Croatia we did not wait long. I want to go to Sweden to meet the rest of my family. I hope we will be treated better in Croatia,’ he said.
(Concluded)
