Tag Archives: Hungary

Migrants stranded in Serbia march toward Croatian border

Refugees and migrants cross the Old Sava Bridge heading in the direction of the Croatian border, in Belgrade, Serbia

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Some 150 migrants, trapped in Serbia, set out on Friday to walk about 125 km (80 miles) to the Croatian border, demanding free and secure passage toward Western Europe, police said.

Police are following the group along the highway connecting Belgrade and the border.

“We started marching toward the border with Croatia. The camps are full, we sleep in parks, we cannot stand it any more,” said a migrant from Pakistan who gave his name as Habib.

According to the U.N. refugee agency, around 6,400 migrants from countries such as Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan are currently registered in Serbia, while local non-governmental organizations say their number is close to 10,000. They mostly arrive from Bulgaria and Macedonia.

Last month another group tried a similar protest march toward the Hungarian border, but eventually decided to return to Belgrade. Hungary has practically sealed its borders to migrants.

Last year a total of 579,518 migrants and asylum seekers were registered arriving in Serbia, out of more than a million who made it to Europe by land and sea.

A deal between Turkey and the European Union, struck in March, has largely shut off the flow of people reaching Greece and the Balkans, but Austria kicked off consultations with Balkan states this month to see what measures can be taken if the deal collapses.

(Reporting by Marko Djurica, writing by Igor Ilic in Zagreb; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Russia fails to win re-election to U.N. Human Rights Council

A still image, taken from video footage and released by Russia's Defence Ministry on August 18, 2016, shows a Russian Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bomber based at Iran's Hamadan air base dropping off bombs in the Syrian province of Deir ez-Zor. Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation/

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Russia failed to win re-election to the United Nations Human Rights Council on Friday, beaten out by Hungary and Croatia, following lobbying by rights groups against Moscow’s candidacy because of its military support for the Syrian government.

In a secret ballot by the 193-member U.N. General Assembly, Hungary received 144 votes, followed by Croatia with 114 votes and Russia with 112 votes. Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said Moscow had faced good competition.

“It was a very close vote,” Churkin told reporters. “Croatia, Hungary – they are fortunate because of their size they are not as exposed to the winds of international diplomacy;  Russia is quite exposed.”

“We have been there a number of years, I’m sure next time we’re going to get in,” he said.

Russian air power has been backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in the country’s nearly six-year war. A recent offensive to capture eastern Aleppo – the rebel-held half of Syria’s largest city – has sparked international outrage.

Russia’s three-year term on the 47-member Geneva-based Human Rights Council will finish on Dec. 31. It had been competing for a second three-year term. Council members cannot serve more than two consecutive terms.

“U.N. member states have sent a strong message to the Kremlin about its support for a regime that has perpetrated so much atrocity in Syria,” said Louis Charbonneau, U.N. director at Human Rights Watch.

The United States, Egypt, Rwanda, Tunisia, Iraq and Japan were elected to the body, while Saudi Arabia, China, South Africa and Britain won a second terms. Their candidacies were uncontested but needed to win a majority vote. In the other competitive slate, Cuba and Brazil beat out Guatemala.

“The re-election of China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia – regimes which systematically violate the human rights of their citizens – casts a shadow upon the reputation of the United Nations,” said U.N. Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer.”

A Saudi Arabia-led military campaign in Yemen has been criticized for killing civilians. U.N. sanctions monitors have accused the Saudi-led coalition, Houthi rebels and Yemen government troops of violating international humanitarian and human rights laws.

(Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Belgrade refugees make a break for the Hungarian border

Several hundred refugees and migrants walk heading in the direction of the Hungarian border, in Belgrade, Serbia

By Aleksandar Vasovic

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Several hundred refugees set off from central Belgrade on Tuesday morning and headed for the Hungarian border, holding handwritten banners and chanting demands for open borders, Reuters witnesses said.

The crowd walked north along the city’s Sava river, stopping occasionally to negotiate with police. All of them appeared to be men and boys about 15 or older. “We are people, not animals,” read one banner.

Some 7,000 migrants, most fleeing war and poverty in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, are trapped in Serbia, prevented from continuing further into Europe by fences now running the length of the Hungarian-Serbian border.

“We will walk to border with Hungary,” said Sadaqat Khan, a Pakistani in his 20s from Qetta. Most of the migrants seek sanctuary in the wealthy countries of Northern Europe. “We do not want Serbia,” Khan said.

Many migrants in Belgrade, most of whom bed down in makeshift camps by the city’s central rail station, had thought Hungary’s referendum last weekend on migrant quotas meant the border would be opened.

In fact, Hungary voted on whether to accept European Union quotas for taking in refugees, and almost all of those who went to the polls voted against the quotas. However, less than half the electorate voted, rendering the results of the referendum invalid.

A large group of refugees who left Belgrade’s camps earlier this year got as far as the northern city of Novi Sad, but from there they were taken to reception centers on the Serbian side of the border.

(Reporting By Aleksandar Vasovic, Fedja Grulovic and Branko Filipovic; Writing by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Larry King)

Hungarian MEP: Pigs’ heads would deter migrants from border fence

The border crossing between Austria and Hungary near Rattersdorf, Austria,

BUDAPEST (Reuters) – A Hungarian member of the European Parliament has sparred with a human rights campaigner and caused an outcry on Twitter after writing that pigs’ heads along the border fence erected by Hungary to keep out migrants would make an effective deterrent.

Under conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Hungary has taken one of the toughest stances among fellow European Union members against the recent mass influx of migrants and refugees to the bloc, a crisis that has divided the EU.

Last year Hungary erected a razor wire topped fence along its southern border to stop migrants, patrolled by thousands of extra troops. On Oct. 2, the country will hold a referendum on whether they agree with the EU’s policy of mandatory settlement of migrants without consent of parliament.

The MEP behind the comments was Gyorgy Schopflin, a former BBC employee and London-based professor, who has been an MEP for Orban’s conservative Fidesz party since 2004.

On Aug. 19, Andrew Stroehlein, Human Rights Watch’s Brussels-based European media director, re-posted on Twitter a Washington Post article and photos showing root vegetables carved into shapes of human faces and put up along Hungary’s southern fence.

These images had earlier appeared on a Facebook page that supports Hungary’s border troops, with the caption: “Instead of scarecrows, these are ‘scarepeople’ made from sugar beet. Seems to work, nobody cut through the fence here in four weeks.”

Stroehlein objected to the images, writing: “Refugees are fleeing war and torture, Hungary. Your root vegetable heads will not deter them.”

On Saturday, Schopflin replied to Stroehlein.

“Might do so. Human images are haram,” he said, referring to forbidden acts under Islam. “But agree, pig’s head would deter more effectively.”

Stroehlein shot back.

“An MEP spouting such xenophobic filth… You are an embarrassment to Hungary, to Europe and to humanity,” he said.

In a subsequent torrent of comments from followers of either men, Schopflin was mostly derided for his remark. He occasionally defended by people who opposed immigration but said he never made any proposal to put up pigs’ heads, telling Reuters his comment had been “a thought experiment.”

He said he planned no apology. “It’s anthropologically intriguing how sensitive the topos is.”

(Reporting by Marton Dunai; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Hungary’s PM says ‘obvious connection’ between terrorism and migration

Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban arrives on the second day of the EU Summit in Brussels, Belgium,

WARSAW (Reuters) – Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Thursday there was a clear link between illegal immigration to Europe and terrorist attacks on the continent.

“It is clear as two and two makes four, it is plain as day. There is an obvious connection,” Orban told reporters after a meeting of the Visegrad Four group of central European leaders in Warsaw.

“If somebody denies this connection then, in fact, this person harms the safety of European citizens,” he said through an interpreter.

(Reporting by Marcin Goettig; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Tackle migration or risk more exits, Hungarian PM tells EU

Hungary's PM Orban arrives on the second day of the EU Summit in Brussels

BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Wednesday he would fight to make the European Union adopt a tougher migration policy, without which it would face the risk of more countries leaving.

Orban has blamed the migration crisis for Britain’s vote to leave, a historic decision that has thrown EU politics into turmoil and unleashed a heated debate among member states on how the bloc should move forward.

A persistent critic of Brussels, Orban told a news conference that a big majority of Hungarians supported EU membership and no political parties advocated an EU exit now, not even the radical nationalist Jobbik.

However, he said migration was a watershed issue likely to redefine the nature and extent of European cooperation, adding he would “not relent” in his drive for a tough policy.

“Without clarifying the goals, we cannot talk about more or less Europe,” he said on state TV. “If the discourse of more or less Europe lacks harmony it will lead to distrust.”

“If we are talking about using the EU’s resources to stop them (migrants) and extend control over the process, then Hungary supports more Europe. But if we want to use more Europe to bring them in… then redistribute them, then we support less Europe and want to keep the issue in national control.”

He said that the migration issue was so important that the EU could not afford to impose its will on members without running the risk of more countries following Britain’s lead.

“We must strive to guarantee that Brussels hears the voice of the citizens, that it is possible to achieve in Brussels a migration policy that meets people’s wishes and does not make it unavoidable to risk their membership to step up against a migration policy they dislike,” Orban said on state TV.

“If one day the people think their country can only stop Brussels’ migration policy by exiting the EU, there will be trouble, because the way I understood (Prime Minister) David Cameron’s words that’s what happened in the UK.”

Hungary plans to hold a referendum in September or October on whether it should reject any future mandatory quotas from Brussels to resettle migrants arriving en masse from countries such as Syria.

“Hungarians believe that a clear indication of their will could help create a migration policy in Brussels that is acceptable to us and therefore the issue of membership will not have to be raised,” Orban said.

(Reporting by Marton Dunai and Krisztina Than; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

EU proposes scheme to share out asylum seekers

Migrants line up to receive personal hygiene goods distributed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), outside the main building of the disused Hellenikon airport

By Gabriela Baczynska

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Commission proposed a system to distribute asylum seekers across the EU on Wednesday that aims to ease the load on states like Greece and Italy but drew immediate condemnation from governments in Eastern Europe.

The European Union executive published legislative proposals to reform the so-called Dublin system of EU asylum rules that includes a “fairness mechanism” under which each of the 28 states would be assigned a percentage quota of all asylum seekers in the bloc that it would be expected to handle.

The quotas would reflect national population and wealth and, if a country found itself handling 50 percent more than its due share, it could relocate people elsewhere in the bloc. States could refuse to take people for a year — but only if they paid another country 250,000 euros per person to accommodate them.

“There is no a la carte solidarity in this Union,” First Vice President Frans Timmermans told reporters. “This is a way to be able to show solidarity in a situation where … you are not able to take the refugees which were allocated to you.”

But at a meeting in Prague, ministers from Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic all repeated their opposition to the idea of relocation: “It makes no sense, it violates EU member states’ rights,” Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Blaszczak told reporters. Hungary’s foreign minister called it “blackmail”.

A two-year emergency relocation scheme was set up last year as Greece struggled to cope with the chaotic arrival of nearly a million people, many of them Syrian refugees, most of whom reached Germany. It was agreed over the furious objections of several central and eastern states, two of whom, Hungary and Slovakia, are contesting the quota system in the EU courts.

In fact, only 1,441 asylum seekers have been relocated out of the 160,000 allowed for under the current temporary scheme.

The proposals, which also include measures to speed up the process of handling asylum claims and tighter controls on the movements of migrants themselves, need backing from governments and the European Parliament — a process that officials expect to be an uphill battle and involve many amendments.

Germany, the bloc’s main paymaster and destination for the bulk of migrants crossing the Mediterranean, has pushed hard for a permanent relocation system and has voiced frustration with the refusal of governments in the east who benefit the most from EU subsidies to take in asylum seekers.

Poland, Hungary and other formerly communist states say immigration, especially from the Muslim cultures of the Middle East, would disrupt their homogeneous societies. Governments also object to paying as an alternative to taking people in.

A similar proposal last year to set a payment of 0.002 percent of GDP was not taken up in the temporary scheme. The Commission did not issue its quota figures. Last year’s tables gave Germany a roughly 18 percent share, France 14 percent, Poland 5.6 percent and Hungary 1.8 percent.

“CONTROVERSIAL”

Any reform of the system, from which Britain, Ireland and Denmark are exempt, will require majority approval by EU governments. But senior officials say EU leaders will try to avoid forcing a deal through over strong minority objections, as happened with the temporary relocation scheme last September.

Even the authors of the proposal admit it is “sensitive” and “controversial” but hope it bridges diverging expectations from member states, EU sources said.

Splits between east and west, north and south over migration have posed one of the biggest challenges the European Union has faced and leaders’ main hope is that a new deal with Turkey to hold down the numbers arriving can take the heat out of a debate that has seen nationalist parties surge in polls across Europe.

Italy has led a push for reform of a Dublin system that gives responsibility for handling asylum claims to the first country migrants arrive in. The Commission last month floated a possibility of scrapping that in favor of a central EU system but has now favored the relocation system.

Chaotic movements of migrants, including many allowed by Italy and Greece to head north without being registered, have thrown the bloc’s cherished Schengen system of open borders into disarray, with governments putting up new barriers to travel.

EU officials hope that the deal with Turkey, from where the bulk of 1.3 million people reached Europe last year, will stem the flow and allow the Union to regain control of its external borders and hence restore order in the Schengen area.

Also on Wednesday, Brussels was expected to confirm a lifting of visa restrictions on Turks as part of the deal with Ankara. The EU is offering to take in refugees directly from Turkey, which hosts 2.7 million Syrians, and such resettlements would be taken into account in countries’ quotas for relocation.

(Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

Nearly 90,000 unaccompanied minors sought asylum in EU in 2015

Two children gather poppies at a field next to a makeshift camp for migrants and refugees at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Some 88,300 unaccompanied minors sought asylum in the European Union in 2015, 13 percent of them children younger than 14, crossing continents without their parents to seek a place of safety, EU data showed on Monday.

More than a million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa reached Europe last year. While that was roughly double the 2014 figure, the number of unaccompanied minors quadrupled, statistics agency Eurostat said.

Minors made up about a third of the 1.26 million first-time asylum applications filed in the EU last year.

European Union states disagree on how to handle Europe’s worst migration crisis since World War Two and anti-immigrant sentiment has grown, even in countries that traditionally have a generous approach to helping people seeking refuge.

Four in 10 unaccompanied minors applied for asylum in Sweden, where some have called for greater checks, suspicious that adults are passing themselves off as children in order to secure protection they might otherwise be denied.

Eurostat’s figures refer specifically to asylum applicants “considered to be unaccompanied minors”, meaning EU states accepted the youngsters’ declared age or established it themselves through age assessment procedures.

More than 90 percent of the minors traveling without a parent or guardian were boys and more than half of them were between 16 and 17 years old. Half were Afghans and the second largest group were Syrians, at 16 percent of the total.

After Sweden, Germany, Hungary and Austria followed as the main destinations for unaccompanied underage asylum seekers.

Seeking to stem the influx of people, the EU has struck a deal with Turkey to stop people crossing from there into the bloc. Turkey hosts some 2.7 million refugees from the conflict in neighboring Syria.

(Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Hungary’s prime minister seeks fence to help reduce migrant flow

BRDO PRI KRANJU, Slovenia (Reuters) – Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that a fence should be erected on the Macedonian and Bulgarian borders with Greece to curb the inflow of migrants into Europe.

“If we cannot secure the outer border (of the EU), regardless of how costly or demanding that is, we will destroy the Schengen regime by ourselves,” Orban said, referring to Europe’s free-travel area.

He was speaking during a one-day visit to Slovenia.

Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar told the same news conference the European Union needed a joint solution within weeks to the migrant crisis to avoid possible conflicts between countries.

“We do not have time until spring to find a solution. We need a solution within weeks … if not, we can expect conflicts between countries,” Cerar said.

“The (migrant) situation is entirely out of control and has nothing to do with humanitarianism, integration and help,” Cerar added.

Over 411,000 migrants have entered Slovenia since Hungary fenced off its borders in October and pushed the migrant flow to the west through Slovenia. Almost all of them continued on their way to Austria and further north to Germany and other EU states.

Slovenia on Thursday followed Austria with an announcement that it will reject all migrants apart from the ones seeking asylum in Austria or Germany.

Over the past months Slovenia, too, has erected about 156 kilometers of fence on its southern border with Croatia to ensure that migrants can only enter the country through official border crossings.

Cerar said Slovenia would pull the fence down as soon as a joint EU solution to the migrant crisis is found.

Orban said Bulgaria, which lies north of Greece, should also join the Schengen area as it has shown that it is ready to secure its borders.

(Reporting By Marja Novak; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Thousands of Refugees Stranded across Balkans

Thousands of refugees, including children and babies, were left stranded at borders in the Balkans as Croatia and Slovenia and other countries began tightening border control and limiting the number of refugees allowed in their countries.

According to CNN, approximately 10,000 refugees were left stranded in Serbia due to Hungary closing down two of its borders – including its border with Serbia. Many of the refugees have been bottlenecked on Serbia’s western border where they are trying to enter Croatia, then travel to Slovenia. Slovenia recently announced they would only accept 2,500 refugees a day, but their neighbor, Croatia, is letting more than 5,000 travel through to Slovenia, despite Slovenia’s limitations. Slovenia borders Croatia, Austria, Hungary, and Italy.

“Croatia is ignoring our pleas, our plans,” Bostjan Sefic, state secretary at Slovenia’s interior ministry, told a news conference, saying the army would be called in to help if such a rate continued.

Croatia is also considering tighter restrictions after more than 200,000 refugees crossed their border over the past month. Government officials are considering raising a barrier or fence across the border.

“I would like to avoid the situation where we have to put any kind of physical barrier on the border, but I have always requested from our government a tight control of the border… I don’t know about the fence, I don’t exclude it as a possibility in the future,” said Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic.

U.N. refugee agencies have reported another concern: they are running out of supplies. As colder weather approaches, doctors are worried that they will not have the supplies to treat children and weaker adults who suffer from hypothermia. Aid agencies and charities continue to donate to the cause, but have been struggling to keep up with the large number of refugees fleeing war in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

“We don’t have a chance to treat, we don’t have the actual medicine to be given out to them, we don’t have any more rain coats,” Dr. Ramiz Momeni, London-based founder of the Humanitas Charity, told Sky News.

“There is a lack of food, lack of blankets, we are missing everything,” UN Refugee Agency spokeswoman Melita Sunjic also told the media outlet.

Since the crisis began, more than 615,000 refugees have arrived in Europe via sea so far this year. In 2014 there were 626,000 asylum applications according to Eurostat figures. Germany alone is expected to see up to 800,000 asylum seekers and refugees this year.