2016-08-05 17:22:00

Minor Migrants 'Disapearing' From Hungary


(Vatican Radio) Hungary's government says people smugglers are running an organized operation to transport unaccompanied minors from a centre for children near Budapest. The allegations came after Hungary stepped up security near its borders with Balkan countries, with support from Germany and other European Union  nations, adding to hardship for hundreds of refugees stranded near the Serbia-Hungary border.

Listen to the report by correspondent Stefan Bos:

Hungary's state secretary of Human Recources Bence Rétvári has expressed concern about minors disappearing from an orphanage in the town of Fót, near Budapest. The official told media that over the past 12 months some 3,500 young migrants received shelter in Fót after claiming they were minors, though they carried no documents to prove this.

He said Hungary is the only European nation besides Denmark where underage migrants receive the same services as locals.

Yet the official claimed that they misuse this opportunity.

Rétvári said migrants use Internet connections provided by the centre to contact relatives who then pay human smugglers to transport them further west.

AID GROUPS

He accused aid groups linked to American billionaire and philanthropist George Soros of distributing leaflets explaining migrants how they can be accepted in the orphanage. But rights activists accuse the government of stirring anti-migrant sentiments and mistreating people fleeing war and poverty. Up to 10,000 Hungarian troops and police are patrolling the border area especially near razor wire fences close to Serbia.

Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has defended these additional security measures. "All the documents released by the [EU's executive] European Commission always claim that to solve the European economic and demographic challenges we need people from outside who come in and settle in Europe," he noted.

However explained that he is "one of the few prime ministers who disagree" with that "not in the name of Europe...but in the name of Hungary." Orbán added that Hungary "does not need a single migrant for its economy to work, or for its population to subsist or for its future."

Hungarian authorities have also announced that a contingent of German police officers will help patrol the country's southern border with Serbia from the second half of August. Its part of a border protection operation by European border agency Frontex.

INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT

Wile the size of the latest contingent is not yet known, officials say more than 150 foreign police officers including some Germans arrived in Hungary this year to boost border security.

Yet this has added to suffering among hundreds of desperate migrants in a makeshift camp near the Serbia-Hungary border without enough running water and sanitation.

"We are not staying in Hungary, we are moving, we are just crossing Hungary," a young man said. "Why they don't let us go to go to another country? I just don't understand."

He and others have ended a day’s long hunger strike that was aimed at asking attention for their plight. They had been walking from the Serbian capital Belgrade some 200 kilometres south in the Balkan summer heat.

Hungary's government claims that despite razor wire fences, nearly 18,000 migrants managed to illegally cross the border. They were detained and under new legislation can be returned to Serbia. Last year more than a million migrants,many from war-torn nations such as Syria and Afghanistan, arrived in the European Union, mostly moving westwards including through Hungary.








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