Mail Online :
Hungary has passed drastic new laws allowing its army to use rubber bullets, stun grenades, tear gas and net guns on the thousands of desperate refugees hoping to pass through the country on their way to new lives in northern and western Europe.Having already sealed off its southern border with Serbia with a vast razor wire fence, Hungary is desperately seeking new ways to deter migrants – the latest of which is the broadening of the military’s powers to block their entry.
Yesterday the Hungarian government also posted adverts in Lebanese and Jordanian newspapers warning them that entering the country illegally is a crime punishable by imprisonment, adding that ‘the strongest possible action’ will be taken against them.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban followed up the adverts with incendiary language, insisting that Europe’s borders are threatened by the refugees, who he claimed were ‘breaking down the doors’, adding: ‘Our borders are under threat. Hungary is under threat and so is the whole of Europe’.
The news comes as German rail operator Deutsche Bahn said it would suspend key services to and from Austria and Hungary until October 4 – citing border controls introduced to manage a record migrant influx.
Hundreds of thousands of people have already made it into western Europe this year, heaping pressure on countries along the migrant trail, some of whom have closed their borders, while others have sought to divert the flow elsewhere. After sealing off its southern border with Serbia last week and passing a series of tough new anti-migrant laws, Hungary yesterday approved further legislation allowing the army to participate in border control.
It also gave troops the right to use rubber bullets, tear gas and net guns at the border ‘in a non-lethal way, unless it cannot be avoided’.
Last week, other legislation came into force allowing Hungary to jail anyone caught crossing the border illegally, which carries a maximum fine of five years in prison.
Migrants are ‘overrunning’ Europe, with the continent’s borders and way of life under threat, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told MPs.
‘They’re not just banging on the door, they’re breaking the door down on top of us.
‘Our borders are in danger, our way of life built on respect for the law, Hungary and the whole of Europe is in danger.’ Deutsche Bahn today said that it will suspend key services to and from Austria and Hungary until October 4.
The route from Budapest via Salzburg, Austria to the southern German city of Munich has been taken by tens of thousands of refugees in recent weeks.
Overwhelmed by the record influx, and seeking to register the asylum-seekers as they enter the country, Germany on September 13 temporarily reintroduced border controls.
Deutsche Bahn said in an online message that due to the border controls, “the long-distance routes of Deutsche Bahn will be suspended, initially until October 4, 2015, between Munich-Salzburg (Austria) and Budapest (Hungary)”.
All regular passenger services would be cut between Salzburg and Munich, DB said, although passengers could travel via other routes to the Austrian capital Vienna.
Europe’s top economy may receive one million people seeking refugee status or political asylum this year, up from the record 800,000 arrivals predicted so far, said Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel this month.
Meanwhile in Croatia scuffles broke out between police and asylum-seekers this morning after they were barred from entering a newly opened reception center meant to register those seeking sanctuary in Europe.
Troubles started at the camp today, when more migrants came to the gates than authorities could handle.Police in the Croatian village of Opatovac pushed people back from the front gate, asked them to sit down and to wait their turn.
Orban’s inflammatory words came as EU interior ministers meet to discuss controversial binding quotas to relocate 120,000 refugees around the bloc from frontline states after they failed to reach a deal last week, and ahead of a bloc-wide emergency summit opening tomorrow.
On the eve of the meetings, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appealed to leaders across the 28-nation bloc, urging them to ‘show leadership and compassion’ as the continent grapples with the wave of migrants, many of them refugees fleeing the conflict in Syria.
He said he was ‘extremely concerned’ about the deteriorating situation, with European borders being closed, the lack of proper facilities to receive newcomers and the increased use of detention against them.
And Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called for responsibility to be shared, saying ‘otherwise there is no point in talking about a united Europe’. Nothing on the agenda of the meetings will immediately help countries in Eastern Europe and the Balkans to manage their borders now. Or next week.
The inaction certainly won’t stop the flow of people moving across Europe, nor will it provide any relief to authorities in individual EU countries trying to slow them down.
Indeed, as interior ministers meet in Brussels today and tomorrow, more than 6,000 people could arrive in Greece alone today.
‘The discussions are completely disconnected from reality,’ Doctors Without Borders humanitarian adviser Aurelie Ponthieu said after she and a colleague briefed an almost-empty European Parliament chamber last week about rescue efforts in the Mediterranean.
Most EU lawmakers and senior officials decided instead to go to lunch.
The arrival of about 500,000 people this year, mostly through Greece and Italy, has laid bare fundamental divisions between former Communist countries and partners further West over how to manage migration.
Aid groups are imploring the EU to set up safe corridors for people to enter, while the U.N. refugee agency wants the bloc to take Syrian refugees from Middle Eastern countries and Turkey.
But faced even with a humanitarian emergency, the EU gives priority to debates about unity and policy over immediate action to tackle Europe’s biggest refugee challenge in decades.
Tomorrow’s summit in Brussels is unlikely to be an exception.
‘It is essential to establish a credible migration policy,’ European Council President Donald Tusk said in his invitation letter to the leaders. Differences over migration ‘cannot be an excuse not to develop a comprehensive strategy or to build a sound migration policy that is effective and responsible while respecting our core values,’ he said.
And it won’t be the last meeting of its kind. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said yesterday that the ‘consultations will be important, but they will not lead to the problem we have being set aside.
There cannot and will not be a solution overnight; many more meetings and discussions will follow. We will need patience.’
Divisions are starkest when it comes to sharing responsibility for hosting the thousands coming to Europe, around two-thirds of whom could qualify for asylum or some form of international protection.
The Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia are vehemently opposed to any obligatory quotas, while Poland, Latvia and Estonia are also skeptical.
More movement might occur later on Tuesday when interior ministers tackle the quota issue at their second emergency meeting in eight days.
The aim is to endorse a plan to share 120,000 refugees arriving in Italy and debt-laden Greece, and perhaps Hungary, even though Budapest is refusing to take part in this kind of arrangement.
When compared to the four million refugees being sheltered in Turkey, Lebanon and impoverished Jordan, the numbers seem paltry for a major world trading power with population of 500 million.
Still, the original plan has been reworked in recent days by ambassadors and experts to try to find some margin for compromise among intractable member states.
Meanwhile, numbers are swelling. An estimated 3,000-4,000 people arrive in Greece each day. Many plan to move north to set up home in Germany, bringing yet more pressure to overburdened borders as they go.
The crisis has exposed deep rifts within the European Union, particularly between members in the former communist east and the wealthier west – the migrants’ preferred destination.
Top diplomats from Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, all of whom have rejected the EU proposal for binding quotas, met in Prague yesterday with their counterpart from Luxembourg, which holds the EU presidency. Despite their opposition to the quota proposal, Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek insisted they were ‘absolutely dedicated’ to reaching agreement with fellow EU nations, acknowledging the need for ‘joint collective action to accelerate the solution to the still very painful situation’.
Sources in Brussels said EU ministers were considering a watered-down plan to relocate migrants and refugees, which would drop binding quotas and leave recalcitrant Hungary out of the scheme altogether.
Unaware of the diplomatic wranglings currently taking place, thousands of people were still on the move throughout Europe, many trying to reach the perceived safe havens of Germany and Sweden.
In Turkey, a few hundred mostly-Syrian refugees who had spent the night camped on the hard shoulder of a motorway outside Istanbul were stopped by police after walking along the emergency lane in the midst of heavy morning traffic.
They had been blocked for the past week at Istanbul’s main bus station, and were trying to reach Edirne in the northwest, which has become a new rallying point for migrants trying to reach Europe.
At the other end of the continent, a group of nearly 400 people, mostly Syrian refugees desperate to cross the Channel to England, were left without shelter around the French port city of Calais after police broke down several makeshift camps that have sprung up, firing teargas to fend off protesters.
So far this year, nearly half a million people have undertaken the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean to reach Europe, official figures show. Some 2,800 have died en route.
At the weekend, at least 13 more drowned, among them six children, when the inflatable dinghy carrying them from Turkey to Greece collided with a ship.
