Migrants Clash With Police in Hungary, as Others Enter Croatia
By RICK LYMAN and DAN BILEFSKY
New York Times
SEPT. 16, 2015
HORGOS, Serbia — Hungarian riot police officers fired water cannons and tear gas on Wednesday after hundreds of migrants tried to break through a gate at the newly reinforced border between Serbia and Hungary.
“Open! Open! Open!” the migrants chanted, as many covered their faces to protect themselves. About 50 riot police officers formed a barrier to prevent them from passing. A vehicle armed with water cannons stood nearby. Military helicopters hovered overhead.
Hungary’s decision to seal its borders and press criminal charges against migrants continued to reverberate across Europe, sending thousands of people on alternative routes through Croatia and other countries to reach Germany and other points in Western Europe. Croatia’s prime minister promised them safe passage, as long as they were only passing through the country.
Hungary moved, meanwhile, to close off another alternative, by tightening its border with Romania. The ripple effects reached as far as Edirne, on the European side of Turkey, where police officers at a bus station near the city were blocking migrants who wished to walk to the nearby border with Greece and Bulgaria.
Hungary announced that police officers had detained 519 people for illegal entry or damaging a border fence since new rules came into force a day earlier. The authorities have opened 46 criminal cases so far, and the first suspects were to appear in court Wednesday afternoon, according to Gyorgy Bakondi, an aide to Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Prosecutors in Szeged, Hungary, said that four Iraqi citizens would appear in court for illegal crossing, in expedited proceedings. They were held after crossing the border through an opening in the fence that had been cut by others, the Hungarian authorities said. One Iraqi was convicted and sentenced to expulsion.
On the Serbian side of the border, hundreds of migrants remained stuck, while still others kept arriving. At the border town of Horgos, migrants, who had slept in tents overnight, lined up for food. There were just 11 toilets and two taps with running water for them. The temperature reached a sweltering 86 degrees Fahrenheit.
Mohamed Afar, 23, who said he had left Damascus, Syria, after his shop there was bombed, said he and 13 relatives had raced to get into Hungary, but had failed to make it before the border was closed. Now, he said, they were sheltering in an abandoned building once used by Serbian customs officials.
“I’m hoping the border will open,” he said, adding that he was looking to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to resolve the crisis. “I will wait. Maybe Ms. Merkel comes to open it? The Hungarian government seems to have no mind or heart. Can’t they see all these families? There is nothing for us here. It smells and it’s dirty.”
Mr. Afar said that he was desperate to take his two young children to Germany or to the Netherlands, but that he was quickly running out of money.
Hungary’s actions had spillover effects throughout the region. Buses that had been carrying migrants to Serbia’s border with Hungary from its border with Macedonia were instead diverted to Croatia, Serbian news media reported.
Croatia’s prime minister, Zoran Milanovic, said on Wednesday that migrants would be allowed to pass through the country, which is a member of the European Union but borders several countries that are not.
“No one will block them,” he said. “No fences.”
But Mr. Milanovic, who faces a tight race in elections scheduled for mid-November, also made it clear that his country was a temporary stop, not a final destination, for the migrants.
The closing of Hungary’s borders has raised concerns among humanitarian groups that migrants seeking to get to Croatia could inadvertently cross through areas near the Hungarian-Croatian border that are littered with thousands of land mines left from the Balkan wars of the 1990s. On Wednesday, Croatian demining experts were sent to the area where many migrants were arriving, Reuters reported.
The countries of the former Yugoslavia, which were torn apart by the wars, have thus far taken a tolerant and welcoming stance toward the migrants, who have viewed the region as a transit zone rather than a final destination. But with Hungary’s decision to criminalize the breaching of its borders, countries like Serbia and Croatia, which are relatively homogeneous and poor compared with some of their richer European neighbors, could soon confront a stream of migrants for which they are ill prepared.
In northern Serbia, a short distance from the border with Hungary, hundreds of people spent the night outside or in temporary tents and expressed determination to enter Hungary, notwithstanding the new ban. Hundreds chanted “Open the door!” and several began hunger strikes.
On a visit to the border region on Tuesday, Aleksandar Vulin, the Serbian minister of labor, employment and social affairs, chided Hungary for refusing to abide by its agreements with Serbia and warned that the situation could spiral out of control.
In Croatia, the Right Party leader, Anto Dapic, told the local news media that he supported offering “temporary aid to women and children, but not young men who look like they just left the gym.”
Mr. Dapic has aligned himself with countries in Eastern and Central Europe, like Hungary, which have argued that immigration is a matter of national sovereignty, and that the European Union has no right to tell countries how many refugees they should take in.
The Croatian interior minister, Ranko Ostojic, said his country “respected the fundamental values of the E.U.,” which it joined in 2013, and had embraced a plan that would distribute migrants across the union’s member states according to their population and wealth.
Asked whether the Schengen Agreement — which has permitted unrestricted travel across much of the Continent — was under attack, Mr. Ostojic said in a televised interview: “If each country has an individual approach to this work, and if this continues, of course, then the founding values for which the E.U. exists, which is freedom of movement of people, is at risk. That is why responsible leaders at this time are really looking for a solution to this situation.”
Over 100 migrants, unable to travel to Hungary, instead went to Sid, Serbia, and crossed the border Wednesday morning to Tovarnik, Croatia, where the authorities were trying to register them, Croatia’s state radio service reported.
Croatian border patrol officers caught a number of migrants trying to bypass registration by going through neighboring cornfields, and, as of 11 a.m., had detained 181 of them.
In Austria, army border controls officially took effect at the start of Wednesday, drastically slowing the flood of migrants from Hungary. The controls were focused on three border crossings: Nickelsdorf, Deutschkreutz and Schachendorf.
Elsewhere in Austria, which followed Germany’s decision over the weekend to impose stringent border checks, there was a bottleneck of migrants seeking to enter Germany. At the Westbahnhof in Vienna on Wednesday morning, an estimated 5,000 migrants spent the night; a few were sleeping on mats outdoors.
In Salzburg, where 1,200 migrants had spent the night in emergency shelters, Michael Rausch, a police spokesman, said the situation was tense.
As of Wednesday morning, there were 2,000 migrants at Salzburg’s main station, according to the Austrian broadcaster ORF. The police said that some 5,000 migrants had slept in Vienna overnight, many of them stranded because of bottlenecks along the German-Austrian border.
In a rare bit of good news as the crisis continued, Osama Abdul Mohsen, the Syrian migrant who was tripped by a Hungarian camerawoman while carrying his child, will live in Madrid, after a Spanish soccer academy offered to help him settle there, The Associated Press reported. Video footage of the trip became a potent symbol last week of the abuse of refugees. The academy said that it wanted to find Mr. Mohsen, who was a coach in Syria, a job in soccer but that he first needed to learn Spanish.
Rick Lyman reported from Horgos, Serbia, and Dan Bilefsky from London. Reporting was contributed byHelene Bienvenu from Horgos; Kimberly Bradley from Vienna; Matthew Brunwasser from Belgrade, Serbia; Boryana Dzhambazova from Edirne, Turkey; Palko Karasz from Budapest; and Joseph Orovic from Zagreb, Croatia.
New York Times
SEPT. 16, 2015
HORGOS, Serbia — Hungarian riot police officers fired water cannons and tear gas on Wednesday after hundreds of migrants tried to break through a gate at the newly reinforced border between Serbia and Hungary.
“Open! Open! Open!” the migrants chanted, as many covered their faces to protect themselves. About 50 riot police officers formed a barrier to prevent them from passing. A vehicle armed with water cannons stood nearby. Military helicopters hovered overhead.
Hungary’s decision to seal its borders and press criminal charges against migrants continued to reverberate across Europe, sending thousands of people on alternative routes through Croatia and other countries to reach Germany and other points in Western Europe. Croatia’s prime minister promised them safe passage, as long as they were only passing through the country.
Hungary moved, meanwhile, to close off another alternative, by tightening its border with Romania. The ripple effects reached as far as Edirne, on the European side of Turkey, where police officers at a bus station near the city were blocking migrants who wished to walk to the nearby border with Greece and Bulgaria.
Hungary announced that police officers had detained 519 people for illegal entry or damaging a border fence since new rules came into force a day earlier. The authorities have opened 46 criminal cases so far, and the first suspects were to appear in court Wednesday afternoon, according to Gyorgy Bakondi, an aide to Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Prosecutors in Szeged, Hungary, said that four Iraqi citizens would appear in court for illegal crossing, in expedited proceedings. They were held after crossing the border through an opening in the fence that had been cut by others, the Hungarian authorities said. One Iraqi was convicted and sentenced to expulsion.
On the Serbian side of the border, hundreds of migrants remained stuck, while still others kept arriving. At the border town of Horgos, migrants, who had slept in tents overnight, lined up for food. There were just 11 toilets and two taps with running water for them. The temperature reached a sweltering 86 degrees Fahrenheit.
Mohamed Afar, 23, who said he had left Damascus, Syria, after his shop there was bombed, said he and 13 relatives had raced to get into Hungary, but had failed to make it before the border was closed. Now, he said, they were sheltering in an abandoned building once used by Serbian customs officials.
“I’m hoping the border will open,” he said, adding that he was looking to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to resolve the crisis. “I will wait. Maybe Ms. Merkel comes to open it? The Hungarian government seems to have no mind or heart. Can’t they see all these families? There is nothing for us here. It smells and it’s dirty.”
Mr. Afar said that he was desperate to take his two young children to Germany or to the Netherlands, but that he was quickly running out of money.
Hungary’s actions had spillover effects throughout the region. Buses that had been carrying migrants to Serbia’s border with Hungary from its border with Macedonia were instead diverted to Croatia, Serbian news media reported.
Croatia’s prime minister, Zoran Milanovic, said on Wednesday that migrants would be allowed to pass through the country, which is a member of the European Union but borders several countries that are not.
“No one will block them,” he said. “No fences.”
But Mr. Milanovic, who faces a tight race in elections scheduled for mid-November, also made it clear that his country was a temporary stop, not a final destination, for the migrants.
The closing of Hungary’s borders has raised concerns among humanitarian groups that migrants seeking to get to Croatia could inadvertently cross through areas near the Hungarian-Croatian border that are littered with thousands of land mines left from the Balkan wars of the 1990s. On Wednesday, Croatian demining experts were sent to the area where many migrants were arriving, Reuters reported.
The countries of the former Yugoslavia, which were torn apart by the wars, have thus far taken a tolerant and welcoming stance toward the migrants, who have viewed the region as a transit zone rather than a final destination. But with Hungary’s decision to criminalize the breaching of its borders, countries like Serbia and Croatia, which are relatively homogeneous and poor compared with some of their richer European neighbors, could soon confront a stream of migrants for which they are ill prepared.
In northern Serbia, a short distance from the border with Hungary, hundreds of people spent the night outside or in temporary tents and expressed determination to enter Hungary, notwithstanding the new ban. Hundreds chanted “Open the door!” and several began hunger strikes.
On a visit to the border region on Tuesday, Aleksandar Vulin, the Serbian minister of labor, employment and social affairs, chided Hungary for refusing to abide by its agreements with Serbia and warned that the situation could spiral out of control.
In Croatia, the Right Party leader, Anto Dapic, told the local news media that he supported offering “temporary aid to women and children, but not young men who look like they just left the gym.”
Mr. Dapic has aligned himself with countries in Eastern and Central Europe, like Hungary, which have argued that immigration is a matter of national sovereignty, and that the European Union has no right to tell countries how many refugees they should take in.
The Croatian interior minister, Ranko Ostojic, said his country “respected the fundamental values of the E.U.,” which it joined in 2013, and had embraced a plan that would distribute migrants across the union’s member states according to their population and wealth.
Asked whether the Schengen Agreement — which has permitted unrestricted travel across much of the Continent — was under attack, Mr. Ostojic said in a televised interview: “If each country has an individual approach to this work, and if this continues, of course, then the founding values for which the E.U. exists, which is freedom of movement of people, is at risk. That is why responsible leaders at this time are really looking for a solution to this situation.”
Over 100 migrants, unable to travel to Hungary, instead went to Sid, Serbia, and crossed the border Wednesday morning to Tovarnik, Croatia, where the authorities were trying to register them, Croatia’s state radio service reported.
Croatian border patrol officers caught a number of migrants trying to bypass registration by going through neighboring cornfields, and, as of 11 a.m., had detained 181 of them.
In Austria, army border controls officially took effect at the start of Wednesday, drastically slowing the flood of migrants from Hungary. The controls were focused on three border crossings: Nickelsdorf, Deutschkreutz and Schachendorf.
Elsewhere in Austria, which followed Germany’s decision over the weekend to impose stringent border checks, there was a bottleneck of migrants seeking to enter Germany. At the Westbahnhof in Vienna on Wednesday morning, an estimated 5,000 migrants spent the night; a few were sleeping on mats outdoors.
In Salzburg, where 1,200 migrants had spent the night in emergency shelters, Michael Rausch, a police spokesman, said the situation was tense.
As of Wednesday morning, there were 2,000 migrants at Salzburg’s main station, according to the Austrian broadcaster ORF. The police said that some 5,000 migrants had slept in Vienna overnight, many of them stranded because of bottlenecks along the German-Austrian border.
In a rare bit of good news as the crisis continued, Osama Abdul Mohsen, the Syrian migrant who was tripped by a Hungarian camerawoman while carrying his child, will live in Madrid, after a Spanish soccer academy offered to help him settle there, The Associated Press reported. Video footage of the trip became a potent symbol last week of the abuse of refugees. The academy said that it wanted to find Mr. Mohsen, who was a coach in Syria, a job in soccer but that he first needed to learn Spanish.
Rick Lyman reported from Horgos, Serbia, and Dan Bilefsky from London. Reporting was contributed byHelene Bienvenu from Horgos; Kimberly Bradley from Vienna; Matthew Brunwasser from Belgrade, Serbia; Boryana Dzhambazova from Edirne, Turkey; Palko Karasz from Budapest; and Joseph Orovic from Zagreb, Croatia.
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