Migrants sped through the Balkans by train, bus and taxi on Monday, racing to beat a border crackdown promised by Hungary’s right-wing government.
Migrants sped through the Balkans by train, bus and taxi on Monday, racing to beat a border crackdown promised by Hungary’s right-wing government.
Hungary is threatening to arrest and jail anyone caught trying to cross undetected its southern, EU border from Serbia as of Tuesday, and to hold in camps those who seek asylum in a bid to stem the flow of migrants, many of them Syrian refugees, through the Balkan peninsula.
Many appeared to be hurrying to beat the new measures, which would inevitably slow their passage through Hungary to the richer countries of northern and western Europe.
The Hungarian police said a record 5,809 people had been registered entering from Serbia on Sunday and a further 5,353 just by 12 am on Monday. Many appeared to be sent directly by train to the Austrian border, a Reuters photographer said.
“We heard the Hungarians will close the border on September 15th so we had to hurry from Greece,” 24-year-old engineering student Amer Abudalabi, from the Syrian capital Damascus, said shortly before crossing the border from Serbia.
“We have not slept since Saturday morning. I’m so tired. I won’t believe it when we cross into Hungary.”
Reuters reporters saw soldiers with automatic weapons standing on the Hungarian side of a metal fence that the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban is building along the length of the border with Serbia. But there did not as yet appear to be any organised effort to halt or slow the passage of migrants. A Hungarian train left from the border town of Roszke bound for the Austrian border, each of its 16 carriages packed with over 100 migrants.
Hungary is on the frontline of Europe’s worst refugee crisis since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, one that has sowed discord and recrimination in the 28-nation EU.
The Police will tighten controls across Hungary from midday on Monday until Sept. 30 midnight to maintain public order and prevent criminal activity, it said in a statement on its website. “Within the context of controls, police can ask for identification and search clothing or vehicles,” it said.
Faced with a surge of refugees and migrants, Hungary is racing to complete a 175-km fence along its southern border by early October. Tougher penalties on illegal border crossings and people smuggling will also take effect on Tuesday.
