With razor wires and militarized borders, tear gas and water cannons, Hungary drove away weary, desperate migrants from its border with Serbia this week.
As they left, the mayor of the border town slammed the door on their backs with a threatening online video. His message to migrants: If all that’s not enough to keep you away, I’ve got heavies of my own.
In the two-minute action piece in Hungarian with English subtitles, Laszlo Toroczkai reveals his own vigilantes backing up the nation’s troops.
“On the territory of Asotthalom they (troops) are supported by militant field guards and civil guards,” he says to action packed music. On horseback, by motorcycle, all-terrain vehicle and helicopter, his men zip along the razor wire fence.
He then stands broad-legged staring through dark glasses with muscly men lined up behind him and tells migrants to go through Croatia and Slovenia if they want to get to Germany.
“Do not trust the lying human traffickers,” he says. “Hungary is a bad choice. Asotthalom is the worst.”
His may have been the most dramatic rejection, but throughout Europe, migrants are increasingly getting the cold shoulder.
And on Friday, French police said a migrant was electrocuted while trying to hop on a freight car headed to Britain, a reminder of the dangers migrants face.
Bottleneck Croatia
Hungary’s deflection methods may have worked.
Traumatized, dehumanized masses of women, men and children fleeing bombed out, shot up homelands in hopes of finding new shelter have diverted to Croatia.
And at first, it looked like they’d found refuge, when the country said it would allow migrants. Then on Thursday, it closed seven of its border crossings with Serbia.
Chaos erupted as thousands of people broke through police lines in the border town of Tovarnik.
Migrant men plunged through openings in fences, and families handed children forward past officers. Police did not use force against them but tried to keep barriers in place.
Since Croatia welcomed refugees, 14,000 migrants have crossed in, Croatian police said Friday. But the UN Refugee Agency said Croatia was only prepared to handle 500 migrants a day.
“I think that too many refugees entered in an uncontrolled way on the first day,” said Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic.
”Yes, of course, Croatia showed a human face, but I stress that the safety of Croatian citizens and the stability of the state comes first,” she said.
Hungary’s new fence
The human stream kept coming into Europe on Friday from the southeast, from the direction of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. From the direction of Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, where overflowing refugee camps have decayed into misery and the World Food Program has progressively cut food rations for lack of funding.
And they are looking for pathways to Germany.
For fear they could still make it to their country via Croatia, Hungary has started building a 41 kilometer fence down that border, too, Hungary’s International Communications Office said. It will be fortified with 600 soldiers.
And Hungary rebuked Croatia this week over its previous generosity. Budapest’s Minister of State Laszlo Szabo summoned Croatia’s ambassador on Thursday, and told him “that his country’s procedure is unacceptable.”
Rivers, mountains, landmines
The path to Austria via Croatia looks shorter on a map, but it is also more arduous, leading over rivers and mountains, and old battle lines of the Balkan wars in the 1990s, where leftover scattered landmines and other unexploded ordnance lurk beneath the brush.
The path also leads through another country, Slovenia, which, like Hungary, is an EU border frontier. And it seems resistant to letting migrants pass through.
Its Prime Minister Miro Cerar tweeted Thursday that his country is committed to protecting the EU’s external borders. And allowing migrants safe passage through the country would violate national and European law, the country’s interior ministry said.
And the next country in the chain to Germany, Austria, has reinstated border control measures on its border to Slovenia.
Germany’s tougher law?
Even if they make it to Germany, which had let in tens of thousands of migrants early on, they could encounter closed borders. And lawmakers there are working to make it easier to quickly deport those who don’t achieve refugee status, German public television broadcaster ARD has reported.
The bill also cuts the level of aid provided to refugees in Germany.
On Thursday, Germany’s minister for migration and refugees resigned. Manfred Schmidt had been criticized for the slow process of dealing with asylum application and creating a backlog.
At the end of last month, 276,617 applications still needed to be processed.
A huge crisis
Aid workers say Europe is facing its largest refugee and migrant crisis since World War II.
More than 473,000 migrants have come to Europe by sea so far this year, more than double the number that arrived during all of 2014, the International Organization for Migration said. At least 182,000 came from war ravaged Syria.
The EU is still trying to figure out how to distribute 160,000 migrants — and whether to set quotas for member countries to absorb them.
Eastern European countries in particular have shown resistance to committing to a quota.