Hungary declares emergency, seals border and detains migrants

Migrants walking along the razor wire fence at the Serbia-Hungary borde on September 15, 2015. Hungary has sealed the last gap in the barricade along its border with Serbia, closing the passage to thoShow more

ROSZKE, Hungary // Declaring a state of emergency, Hungary sealed off its southern border with Serbia on Tuesday and detained those trying to enter illegally, aiming to shut down the flow of migrants pouring in.

Chaos ensued at the border, as hundreds of migrants piled up in a no man’s land, and Serbian officials reacted with outrage.

Within hours of asylum seekers submitting claims in no-man’s land on Hungary’s southern border, officials returned them to Serbia, a UNHCR official said.

Erno Simon from the UNHCR said he saw several asylum requests rejected inside a so-called “transit zone” of metal containers in no-man’s land, on the first day of the Hungarian border crackdown.

Stuck on a strip of road between the two countries’ checkpoints, those fleeing violence in their homelands pitched tents and settled in. But frustrations were on the rise.

As a police helicopter hovered above, migrants chanted “Open the border!” and shouted insults at Hungarian riot police. Some refused food and water in protest.

Serbia’s foreign minister declared it was “unacceptable” that migrants were being sent back from Hungary while more and more were arriving from Macedonia and Greece.

“[Serbia] wants to be part of the solution, not collateral damage. There will have to be talks in the coming days with Brussels and other countries,” Ivica Dacic said.

The turmoil at the Hungarian-Serbian border came a day after the 28-nation bloc failed to come up with a united immigration policy at a contentious meeting in Brussels. Hungary, however, was not pinning its hopes on any action soon from Brussels or its neighbours.

The state of emergency declared on Tuesday in two southern regions gave authorities greater powers to deal with the crisis, allowing them to shut down roads and speed up asylum court cases.

The new laws that took effect at midnight in Hungary now make it a crime to cross or damage a 4-metre razor-wire fence the government has built along the southern border with Serbia and also includes longer prison terms for convicted human traffickers.

Technically, parliament must still approve the deployment of the military, expected next week, but the border has had heavily armed military presence for days.

Gyorgy Bakondi, homeland security adviser to Mr Orban, said authorities caught60 people trying to cross into the country. They are now in police custody and are being charged with committing offences under the new laws. Hungary also closed two of seven border crossings with Serbia on Tuesday, and its foreign minister Peter Szijjarto announced that Hungary plans to build a fence along part of its border with Romania in addition to the barrier being erected along the frontier with Serbia.

“The government has decided to make preparations for the construction of a fence on the Hungary-Romania border, extending from the border triangle of Hungary, Serbia and Romania, for a reasonable distance,” Mr Szijjarto said.

“The measure is necessary as people-smugglers may change their routes because of the existing fence on the Hungary-Serbia border, hence a part of the immigration pressure may get directed towards Romania,” he said, according to state news agency MTI.

Aleksandar Vulin, the Serbian social affairs minister in charge of migrants, urged the European Union to take charge of the escalating crisis at the Hungarian border, which he insisted had to remain open.

“This is not only a Hungarian and Serbian problem. This is a problem for the whole of Europe. Europe has to find a solution fast before the situation escalates even further,” he said.

Those who managed to make it into Hungary on Monday were grateful to be boarding buses for Austria.

Zakariah Sharfo Surian, a mechanic from the Syrian city of Aleppo, said he couldn’t understand the new hard-line Hungarian laws.

“Those who leave their country are fleeing because of the pressures of war,” he said. “To escape death for a better life and to escape the pressures in our country. No one would leave their country without a good reason.”

Migrants had rushed to beat the Hungarian deadline. A record 9,380 migrants entered Hungary on Monday, beating the previous record of 5,809 set just a day earlier.

Some 200,000 migrants have entered Hungary so far in 2015, nearly all by walking across the southern border with Serbia. Almost all, however, are on their way to Germany or other wealthy Western European nations.

* Associated Press, with additional reporting from Reuters and Agence France-Presse