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BUDAPEST. — Hungary’s parliament approved yesterday the systematic detention of all asylum-seekers in container camps, in a move that Prime Minister Viktor Orban said will make all of Europe safer from terror attacks. Hungary is a European Union member country. Calling immigration the “Trojan Horse of terrorism”, Orban said: “If the world sees that we can defend our borders… then no one will try to come to Hungary illegally.”
The legislation will see asylum-seekers entering Hungary as well as those currently in the country confined in camps at Hungary’s southern borders while their applications are processed.
Anyone who passed through a “safe third country”, including the main entry point Serbia, will be refused. Appeals against rejections will be fast-tracked in three days.
Migrants whose applications are unsuccessful may also have to cover the costs of their own detention. Unaccompanied minors under 14 will be placed in care as before.
Hungary previously systematically detained all asylum applicants but suspended the practice in 2013 under pressure from Brussels, the UN refugee agency and the European Court of Human Rights.
The UNHCR said yesterday that the new legislation “will have a terrible physical and psychological impact on women, children and men who have already greatly suffered.”
The Hungarian Helsinki Committee said it was the “last stepping stone in completely disregarding (Hungary’s) asylum obligations under EU and international law and trampling the rights of asylum seekers.”
“We are urging the EU to step up and show Hungary that such illegal and deeply inhumane measures have consequences,” Amnesty International said.
At the height of Europe’s migrant crisis in 2015, over 400,000 people, many fleeing the Syrian civil war, passed through Hungary on their way to western Europe.
This has since slowed dramatically, with 1,004 people applying for asylum in Hungary this year and 105 people crossing the border illegally, according to the government.
But Orban said yesterday that this was just a temporary lull.
“The pressure on the border will not end in coming years, as there are still millions of people preparing to step out on the road in hope of a better life,” he said.
The 53-year-old Orban, a strong admirer of US President Donald Trump, has long taken a hard line on immigration.
He has said that a large influx of Muslim migrants into Europe poses a security risk and endangers the continent’s Christian culture and identity.
Budapest has refused to take part in an EU scheme to share around the EU the hundreds of thousands of migrants who entered the bloc in recent years.
“Those readying for the journey do not want to live according to our ways and culture but according to their own — only with a European quality of life,” Orban said yesterday. — AFP.
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