SERBIAN-HUNGARIAN
BORDER
(Reuters) --- Hungary 's
right-wing government shut the main land route for migrants into the European
Union on Tuesday, taking matters into its own hands to halt Europe 's
influx of refugees.
An emergency effort
led by Germany
to force EU member states to accept mandatory quotas of refugees collapsed in
discord.
Chancellor Angela Merkel appealed for European unity after
one of her ministers called for financial penalties against countries that
refused to accommodate their share of the migrants, provoking anger in central Europe .
A Czech official
described such threats as empty but nonetheless "damaging" while Slovakia said
they would bring the "end of the EU".
Under new rules
that took effect from midnight, Hungary
said anyone seeking asylum on its southern border with Serbia , the
EU's external frontier, would automatically be turned back, and anyone trying
to sneak through would face jail.
At the border,
migrants barred from continuing their long journey north towards a new life in Germany chanted
as the sun went down, and one held up a banner saying: "Mama Merkel,
please help us!"
Families with small
children sat in fields beneath the new 3.5-metre- (10-foot-) high fence, topped
with razor wire, which blocks entry for migrants to the former communist
country.
"Strike. No
food. No water. Open this border," a woman had written on a child’s dress
that she held above her head.
Migrants who tried
to apply for asylum in a transit zone of metal containers were swiftly turned
away. Macruf Suhufi Abdi Omar, a Somali, told Reuters he had been refused
asylum barely an hour after he gave his fingerprints.
Hungarian officials
said they had denied 16 asylum claims at the frontier within hours and were
processing 32 more. Police had arrested 174 people for trying to sneak across
the border.
Prime Minister
Viktor Orban, one of the continent's loudest opponents of mass immigration,
says he is acting to save Europe's "Christian values" by blocking the
main overland route used by mainly Muslim refugees, who travel through the
Balkans and cross his country mainly to reach Germany
or Sweden .
Amnesty International
accused Hungary of
"showing the ugly face of Europe 's
shambolic response" to the crisis.
The great migration
has led to the unravelling of one of the 28-member EU's signature achievements,
its Schengen system of border-free travel across much of the continent.
Record arrivals
forced Berlin
to reimpose emergency frontier controls this week, with several neighbours
swiftly following suit. Austria ,
next on the road from Hungary
to Germany ,
said tougher border measures would take effect at midnight.
"I think we
must talk about ways of exerting pressure," he told ZDF television, adding
that some of the countries that opposed quotas were beneficiaries of EU funds.
Tomas Prouza, the
Czech State Secretary for the EU, said the apparent German threat to cut off EU
funds was "empty but very damaging to all". Slovak Prime Minister
Robert Fico declared his country would never agree to quotas, and threats of
financial retaliation would lead to "the end of the EU".
Merkel later called
for a special EU refugee summit, and distanced herself from her minister's
comments. "We need to establish a European spirit again," she told a
news conference. "I don't think threats are the right way to achieve
agreement."
U.S. President
Barack Obama said the crisis had worsened and required cooperation from Europe
and the United States .
"The United States feels it is important ... to also
take our share of Syrian refugees as part of this overall humanitarian
effort," he added during a meeting with Spain 's King Felipe VI.
After later meeting
German state leaders, Merkel added: "There was great agreement that we
want to give shelter to those people who need shelter, and will do everything
humanly possible to do so. On the other hand, we were also clear that those who
have no prospect of staying, cannot stay in our country."
EU interior
ministers, who failed to agree on Monday on the quota system championed by Germany , will
meet again on Sept. 22.
Eastern European
countries argue that a welcoming stance encourages more people to come, overwhelming
welfare systems and risking the dilution of national cultures.
Under its new
rules, Hungary said it had
determined Serbia
was "safe", and therefore it could automatically deny asylum claims
at the border.
"If someone is
a refugee, we will ask them whether they have submitted an asylum request in Serbia . If they
had not done so, given that Serbia
is a safe country, they will be rejected,” Orban was quoted as telling private
broadcaster TV2 on Monday.
Orban says that by
reinforcing the EU's external border his government is merely enforcing EU
rules, and that no countries are duty-bound to take in refugees that pass
through safe states. Critics at home and in European neighbors say some of his
rhetoric has crossed a line into alarmism and xenophobia.
WE HAVE LOST
EVERYTHING
At the border,
migrants were close to despair. "I don’t know what I will do," said
40-year-old Riad from Aleppo in Syria . “I will
wait to see. We have lost everything to reach this point.”
A record 156,000
migrants entered the EU in August, the bloc's border agency Frontex reported,
taking the total for the year to more than 500,000. Frontex chief Fabrice
Leggeri told Reuters his agency was preparing to speed up identification of
illegal migrants and would help to deport them in large numbers.
EU data show just
under half of asylum claims were granted last year but less than half of those
rejected were deported.
"We’re on the
street now,” said Mouz, a 22-year-old Syrian, who slept on the Hungarian border.
Asked if he might consider another route, he replied: “I don’t know. I’m from Syria . I cannot
go back.”
"That's no
longer our responsibility," Aleksandar Vulin, the minister in charge of
policy on migrants, told the Tanjug state news agency. "They are on
Hungarian territory and I expect the Hungarian state to behave accordingly
towards them."
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