Hungary launches border crackdown, says refugees risk expulsion

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Hundreds of migrants spent the night in the open on Serbia’s northern border with Hungary, their passage to western Europe stalled on Tuesday by a Hungarian crackdown to confront the continent’s worst refugee crisis in two decades.

Aid workers brought tents, food and water for about 500 migrants, many of them Syrian refugees, denied entry overnight under a strict new border regime that European Union (EU) member Hungary warned many see many asylum seekers rejected and expelled back to Serbia.

Some made it, while others were stopped before they could try and directed to the official border crossing by police and soldiers. Some, tired and cold, sat down in fields short of the 3.5-metre high metal fence.

A major flashpoint in Europe’s worst refugee crisis since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990’s, Hungary has vowed to clamp down on the flow through the Balkan peninsula to the richer countries of northern and western Europe.

As ministers of the EU’s 28 member states argued over how to share out responsibility for some of the hundreds of thousands who have sought asylum in Europe this year, Hungary under right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban moved on Monday to close down their main land route into the bloc along railway tracks from Serbia.

“We will start a new era,” government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said shortly after midnight on the border.

“We will stop the inflow of illegal migrants over our green borders.”

Police have recorded over 190,000 entering Hungary this year, including a record for one day of more than 9,000 on Monday.

Their window of opportunity is rapidly shrinking as Hungary puts the finishing touches to the fence the length of its 175-km southern border.

On Monday, a cargo wagon, one end covered in razor wire, was shunted into position to close the main informal crossing point for migrants. Helmeted police and soldiers stood guard and a helicopter circled overhead.

“We’re on the street now,” said Mouz, a 22-year-old Syrian, who slept on the border.

Asked if he might consider another route, possibly through Serbia’s western neighbour Croatia, he replied:

“I don’t know. I’m from Syria. I cannot go back.”

The government says refugees will still be able to claim asylum at two official border crossings into Hungary, but if they have entered from Serbia – and not already sought asylum there – they face automatic expulsion within eight days after Budapest in July declared its impoverished southern neighbour ‘safe’ for refugees.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), says it disputes the designation of Serbia, not an EU member, as a so-called “safe third country,” which would imply refugees have a fair chance of being granted asylum and will receive all the necessary protections and support.

Rights groups say Serbia meets none of the criteria and is still finding homes for thousands of its own refugees from the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990’s, the last time Europe confronted displacement of people on such a scale.