Asylum-seekers face Hungary detention
Print Edition
HUNGARY’S parliament yesterday approved the automatic detention of all asylum-seekers in container camps at the borders, sparking “deep concern” at the UN’s refugee agency.
The legislation, approved by a large majority of lawmakers, is in response to recent terror attacks in Europe carried out by migrants, according to hardline Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Speaking at a swearing-in of the latest contingent of some 450 new border police personnel in Budapest yesterday, Orban called immigration “the Trojan horse of terrorism.”
“If the world sees that we can defend our borders ... then no one will try to come to Hungary illegally,” he added.
Under the new measures, all asylum-seekers entering Hungary as well as those currently in the country will be confined in the container camps while their applications are processed.
Anyone who passed through a “safe third country” will be rejected, and any appeals against rejections will be fast-tracked into a three-day procedure.
Hungary previously systematically detained all asylum applicants but suspended the practice in 2013 under pressure from Brussels, the UN refugee agency and the European Court of Human Rights.
The UNHCR said the legislation “violates Hungary’s obligations under international and EU laws, and will have a terrible physical and psychological impact on women, children and men who’ve already suffered.”
The government says the new camps will comprise converted shipping containers built onto existing “transit zones” erected in 2015 at the southern border with Serbia.
It says the new legislation will protect both Hungarian and EU citizens, with migrants abusing the previous rules and leaving Hungary before a verdict is reached, exposing the bloc to the risk of terror attacks.
EU member Hungary’s border is also an outside border of Europe’s border-free Schengen zone.
As well as building militarized razor wire fences on its borders with Serbia and Croatia in 2015, Hungary has handed thousands of migrants expulsion orders for “illegal border-crossing” and even jailed some.
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