Hungary seizes migrant train from Croatia, disarms Croatian police, arrests migrants

Posted by Kumiko Oumae on Sunday, 20 September 2015 09:09.

All of the Croats have been arrested, and the migrant trains have been stopped.

Independent.ie, ‘Hungary seizes migrant train from Croatia, disarms 40 Croatian police and arrests train driver’, 18 Sep 2015:

Hungarian authorities seized a train bringing migrants into the country from Croatia, disarmed 40 police on board and detained the driver after over 4,000 migrants arrived across their border, the head of the Hungarian disaster unit said.

Gyorgy Bakondi told reporters the Croatian train that shipped the refugees and migrants to Magyarboly came without any prior notice, like the rest of the new arrivals coming on other trains and on buses.

Hungary registered and disarmed the 40 police who escorted the train, he said according to a video posted on M1 state television’s website.

[...]

The row between the two countries and their respective handling of the migration crisis has deepened as Hungary’s foreign minister on Friday accused Croatia of pushing migrants to break the law by “illegally” breaching Hungarian borders.

“Rather than respecting the laws in place in the EU, they (Croatia), are encouraging the masses to break the law, because illegally crossing a border is breaking the law,” said Peter Szijjarto, speaking in Belgrade following talks with his Serbian counterpart. [...]

It seems to be a matter of incentives here. The Croats are trying to avoid having to deal with the problem by sending the migrants deeper into the European Union, because they don’t want to have to keep and process the migrants that have already entered Croatia. Hungary’s way of dealing with the migrants is to block entry with a ‘fast solution fence’ along all the areas that are not separated from other countries by a river.

If Hungary continues to maintain its position, they may create a domino effect of incentives whereby all other countries will have to erect fences that face outward, and move migrants outward after processing and declining their refugee applications, rather than just passing the buck ever deeper into the continent.

Providing that this continues, Hungary may be seen as having done a lot to save Europe from disaster.

Kumiko Oumae works in the defence and security sector in the UK. Her opinions here are entirely her own.

Tags: Demographics, Ethnicity and Ethnic Genetic Interests, European Union, Immigration, Immigration and Politics, Islam & Islamification, War on Terror

Comments:

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.