Posted by DanielS on Sun, 20 Sep 2015 09:36 | #

I’m still glad that the Croatians were concerned enough and took initiative to get rid of them, but it is indeed, even better that the Hungarians handled the situation more properly still on a meta- read international level - by compelling the Croats to negotiate these matters correctly on an inter-European basis.

However, my point was that the Croatians were showing that putting would-be migrants on transport and removing them from one’s country can be done.

It also showed that European nations can still act with a degree of independence - one of my key points in connection to what you’ve said in response to jawake’s suggestion that EU members had no autonomous say in accepting or rejecting immigrants.

It is true, however, that merely and only shipping them so far as another European country is a bit like wiping one’s dirty hands upon someone else’s clean clothes.

Posted by Hungary builds fence, arrests illegal crossing on Thu, 15 Oct 2015 15:02 | #

Hungary demonstrates border control

NPR, “Hungary Steps Up Arrest And Deportation Of Migrants” Oct. 12, 2015:

Mustafa Abdul Saleh (at right front), a 20-year-old Kurd from Syria, confers with a Kurdish interpreter (left), during his trial in Szeged, Hungary. Saleh passed through a hole in the razor wire fence that Hungary has built on its border with Serbia. Breaching the fence is a criminal offense, and Saleh was expelled from Hungary and ordered back into Serbia.

On a road weaving through a forest on Hungary’s southern border with Serbia, police lie in wait.

Migrants who manage to squeeze through holes cut in a barbed-wire border fence and walk north eventually have to cross Route 55 — where Hungarian police are ready for them.

Backed by agents from Frontex, the European Union’s border control agency, the cops stop dozens of migrants and refugees as they emerge from the forest. They point guns and shine bright lights into the faces of frightened Iraqis and Syrians.

The refugees, mostly men, are instructed to sit cross-legged in the grass, at the side of the road. Then police use dogs to corral them into a police van and take them to jail.

Officials say an average of 100 foreigners a day are arrested here. That number is relatively low because last month, Hungary sealed its Serbian border with a 10-foot-high fence topped with razor wire.

As Hungary Seals Its Borders, A Rush To Make It Across

Migrants must now enter at official border crossings, with proper visas — or cut through the barbed wire and crawl through.

The chaos and confusion of Europe’s migration crisis is perhaps best reflected here in Hungary, where treatment of migrants is drastically different depending on which border they cross, and how.

Hungarian troops are building a second fence along the border with Croatia, but that frontier is not yet closed — and some 6,000 migrants arrive there daily.

Migrants who enter Hungary from Croatia are the lucky ones: They get free train rides across the country and then cross into Austria on foot in less than a day.

It’s an entirely different story on the Serbian frontier, where migrants are immediately arrested. Within a few days, most are put on trial at a special tribunal in the southern Hungarian city of Szeged. Each morning, groups of migrants climb out of police vans and trudge into the courthouse, under guard.

Instead of evaluating their asylum claims, Hungary puts these migrants on criminal trial, under a law that took effect last month making it illegal to breach Hungary’s border fences. Migrants can be punished with up to three years in prison.

“They don’t know anything about the procedure. The translators should explain it to them, with the lawyers’ help,” says defense lawyer Timea Kovacs. But court translators are paid by police, she says. They’re sometimes biased.

Testimony about who the refugees are and what they’re fleeing back home in the Middle East or Africa is often ruled irrelevant. Only evidence about the Hungarian border fence is admissible in court.