With razor wire, Hungary closes border to migrants

Source: By MIKE CORDER and SHAWN POGATCHNIK The Associated Press, 14/09/2015

Roszke, Hungary • Hungary deployed a boxcar bristling with razor wire
to close a key border crossing and warned of a new era of swift
deportations Monday as governments across Europe debated how to share
the burden of housing hundreds of thousands seeking refuge — and
whether the continent's hard-won policy of passport-free travel could
survive the unrelenting flow of humanity.


In Brussels, ministers from the 28-nation bloc agreed to share
responsibility for 40,000 people seeking refuge in overwhelmed Italy
and Greece. But their slow deliberations appeared disconnected from
the rapidly shifting situation on the most besieged borders of Europe,
where Austria, Slovakia and even the Netherlands joined Germany in
reintroducing border controls for the first time in a generation in a
bid to record the arrivals of thousands daily from the Middle East,
Asia and Africa.


The checks, involving police on trains and on border roads, snarled
traffic and slowed the speed and volume of migrants reaching Germany,
which had received more than 60,000 newcomers since throwing opens its
borders Sept. 5 to people trying to reach the E.U. heavyweight via
Hungary, the Balkans and Greece. Since Sunday those borders have grown
tighter again, reflecting German unease at the sheer volume and lack
of commitment from EU partners to share the load.


Hungary, a key link in the migrant chain, emphasized its determination
to house as few asylum seekers as possible.


Prime Minister Viktor Orban warned that people walking into his
country from non-E.U. member Serbia faced a new regime of swift
rejection and deportation.


New laws effective Tuesday also made it a criminal offense, punishable
by prison or deportation, to damage Hungary's newly erected border
defenses. These include a 13-foot fence — and at a rail line that long
served as the most popular crossing point, a boxcar on the line
toughened with a seven-layer coil of razor wire.


Orban told Hungarian television that the vast bulk of travelers should
be treated as illegal immigrants seeking a European standard of
living, not war refugees fleeing life-threatening dangers.


"If someone claims to be a refugee, he will be asked if he filed an
asylum request in Serbia. And if he did not file it, since Serbia is a
safe country, it will be rejected," Orban said, adding that if people
simply wanted safety, they could have stopped in Turkey, Greece,
Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary or Austria, not overwhelmingly sought to
reach Germany.


"These people are not coming for their security. They are not running
for their lives," Orban said, describing their true goal as "a German
life."


People who had just crossed into Hungary, hours ahead of the new
get-tough border regime, offered a harrowingly different motive for
their flight.


"Every day, the Islamic State group was issuing new orders. The
situation was terrible," said Raed Waleed Abdullah, 34, an Iraqi who
fled the northern city of Mosul with his wife and three children after
its takeover by the extremist militants. He said they paid the
equivalent of $11,000 to Turkish smugglers to make the short sea
crossing to Greece and had traveled for nine days so far. Abdullah
said he sold his Mosul apartment and taxi to fund the expedition.


"I had no income, there was no electricity and they were forcing us to
live according to their ways," he said"Those who refused to obey
[Islamic State] would be thrown from tall buildings. They are
inflicting so much suffering," added his wife, Hala Khalil.


Serbia's minister for migration, Aleksandar Vulin, said his country
wouldn't accept the return of any asylum seekers once they reached
Hungary.


"They are no longer our problem," Vulin said.