Doors slamming shut in Hungary for asylum seekers
“It’s difficult in a fresh method for us. There is hardly anyone left to speak to,” Karzan Mohamed Sharif Amin, an Iraqi Kurd, told AFP at a government-run shelter in western Hungary.
A father of four, the 37-year-old is among a small number of asylum seekers still inside Hungary as its doors in effect slam shut for folks fleeing war and persecution.
New rules set up since June say asylum seekers must first submit a so-called “declaration of intent” at among the country’s embassies abroad, rather than on arrival at the border as before.
From 2017, asylum seekers were automatically parked in controversial frontier “transit zone” camps while their applications were processed.
However in May the EU’s top court ruled that amounted to unlawful detention.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s hardline anti-immigration government then shut both camps and moved the almost 300 persons there to open facilities away from the border.
- ‘Inefficient’ system -
Stuck at the Tompa transit zone for almost 2 yrs, Amin and his family were moved to the Vamosszabadi centre close to the Slovakian border, from where he says most asylum-seekers have since quietly left for western Europe.
But he himself is hopeful of still having his case accepted - having first applied in September 2018.
Though human rights groups welcomed the closing of the transit camps, the continuing long legal process endured by Amin is typical of the “inefficient” system, said Timea Kovacs, a lawyer with the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (HHC).
“Cases go slowly for no reason, while kids lose out on school, and adults on integration,” she told AFP.
Amin, struggling to work while looking forward to a judgement on his application, says he just wants his children - the youngest of whom was created at Tompa - to go to school and “be happy”.
If he previously stayed in Iraq, he feared they might have ended up either in the military or the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
“But directly after we entered Tompa we had more problems and pains than in Iraq,” he said. “I could not understand why my children must grow up in prison in Hungary.”
The heavily guarded camps were built alongside the fortified border fence that Orban erected in 2015.
Asylum-seekers were housed in metal shipping containers, with a turnstile allowing entry to the camp from the Serbian side.
In a large number of cases taken to the European Court of Human Rights by the HHC, rejected applicants were also denied food.
Budapest maintained that asylum-seekers could go back to Serbia at any time, however the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in its May ruling said exiting that way would violate Serbian law, used trapping inmates in a legal no man’s land.
- ‘Border defence tougher’ -
Orban blasted the CJEU ruling as an effort to force Budapest to let in migrants.
“We responded to the attack in Brussels by making border defence even tougher,” he said.
Now the Hungarian asylum authority has 8 weeks to examine applicants’ “declarations of intent” to get protection lodged at embassies in neighbouring countries.
“That’s where they’ll have to wait,” said Orban.
If approved, per month of automated detention in Hungary follows.
“Until the end of July, seven folks submitted letters of intent,” in Serbian capital Belgrade, the Hungarian foreign ministry told AFP.
Entry to the transit zones had already been suspended indefinitely in March as Europe shut their borders over new coronavirus fears.
In line with the UN’s refugee agency, it really is now impossible for just about any asylum seeker who approaches Hungary to enter the united states legally and seek protection.
This takes its “breach of EU and international refugee law”, said its Hungarian spokesman Erno Simon.
“The federal government has practically eliminated all of the asylum seekers,” Simon told AFP. As well, according to Hungarian police data on “illegal migration” in 2020, around 20,000 persons without documents were apprehended within Hungary or on trying to enter the united states by August - despite a three-month lull due to the virus-related border closures.
Those held have either been “escorted” back over the border fence into Serbia, blocked from entry, or held in custody, according to police.
Data from the UN refugee agency in Belgrade showed that in July alone, 804 persons were pushed back from Hungary.
Back in Vamosszabadi, significantly less than 15 of the asylum-seekers moved there in May remain, according to Amin.
He plans in which to stay Hungary if he receives refugee status when his case is finally, he hopes, concluded the following month.
