Migrants and fences
After several migrants have lately tried to enter this country in order to reach Hungary, Budapest is considering the possibility of building a barbed wire fence at the border with Romania.
Daniela Budu, 13.09.2016, 13:01
The Hungarian authorities are considering the possibility of building a barbed wire fence at the border with Romania if the routes used by migrants to reach Western Europe were to change. The Hungarian prime ministers chief homeland security advisor, Gyorgy Bakondi, said that given the fact that last weekend the Romanian authorities had detained several migrants trying to reach Hungary, the Romanian Police and Gendarmerie were carrying out an intensive activity to guard the Hungarian and the Serbian borders. Bakondi said that the emergence of new routes from Serbia or Bulgaria to Romania must be avoided, since that would require more efforts from the Hungarian authorities like those made at the countrys Southern border.
Gyorgy Bakondi said that if need be, a barbed wire fence might be built at the border with Romania too, recalling that the designing and layout of the site had already been completed, the component parts of the fence were stored in the area and the Hungarian Army had a thorough experience in implementing such works.
Last autumn, the government in Budapest decided to erect such fences at its borders with Serbia and Croatia and introduce other strict regulations, providing for illegal migrants detained along an 8-km-wide land strip along the Southern border to be taken beyond the barbed wire fences. Of late, Hungarian government officials have often focused on the issue of migration, trying to talk as many citizens as possible into participating in the referendum on the mandatory refugee relocation quotas, due on October 2nd.
On Monday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban criticized again the European refugee policy, which in his opinion, jeopardizes Europe. Orban went on to say that the aim of the referendum was the defense of Hungary, the only European country where people will be able to express their views in a referendum on migration. The first response to the Hungarian officials statements has come from the foreign minister of Luxembourg, Jean Asselborn, who condemns Budapests stance on the refugee crisis, saying that Hungary should be kicked out of the European Union. “The fence which Hungary is building to keep out refugees is getting longer, higher and more dangerous. Hungary is not far from issuing an order to shoot refugees, Asselborn said.
(Translated by AM Palcu)
