by Nick Thorpe
In Budapest they found a hotel and each paid €50 a night for a room. The hotel manager warned them not to go outside, because they might get caught by the police.
Once, when we went out, the police started chasing us, but we were faster, and we got away. Then we found a WiFi signal in the street, I guess it belonged to a restaurant. Anyhow we had a Hungarian phone number for a smuggler, which someone in Turkey had given us. He was Lebanese and had been living in Hungary long enough to know the language. We called him and sent him our location. Half an hour later he found us and took us to a flat. There were nearly twenty persons there, and all of them had been fingerprinted except me and Ahmed.
The smuggler drove them as far as the Austrian border in an Audi saloon, for €400 each. Three of them in the car plus the driver. They just drove on the main motorway to Hegyeshalom in the late afternoon, and saw no police on the way. ‘The police were all in the railway stations and bus stations. We crossed the border by car. He stopped at a big supermarket inside Austria. We picked up other refugees there, then he took us to Vienna.’ They stayed three nights in a hotel, then got as far as Munich before police took them off a train and sent them to a camp.
Back at the railway track at Röszke, I interpreted one morning for a Syrian man and the Hungarian police. He only spoke Greek and explained to me that his wife and young daughter were hiding in the maize field nearby. At that moment, a Hungarian police Skoda was parked across the track, manned by two young policemen, and he was afraid to cross. I explained his predicament to the policemen.
‘If he’s worried about our presence here, we’ll just drive off and get out of his way,’ the policeman told me kindly, and he did just that. While the Hungarian police often got a bad press, many I met were polite, friendly, and thoughtful.
There were also tragedies. One Syrian woman I met, distraught, had just heard that her friend’s baby died in childbirth in the camp at Kiskunhalas, because, she said, officials did not take her desperate requests for help seriously. ‘The police just laughed at her, like she was a dog. The water we were given there stank. We only got food once every twenty-four hours. It was a terrible place.’
Most of the refugees carried a single rucksack with as many things as they could squeeze into it, but some carried two or three tied together, helping weaker members of their group. There were still just two or three mobile toilets in the police collecting point in the cornfield at Röszke.
I met two Syrian girls, Haneen and Rama early another morning in the cornfield. Both were seventeen, from Aleppo, and were travelling with Haneen’s father and uncle. I let Haneen use my laptop to Skype with her aunt in Aleppo, to tell her they were safe.
A few days later I bumped into them again at the east station in Budapest. They had been through the registration process and were looking for ways to get to Germany now the station was closed to refugees. The same day an old friend, Viktor Bori, a jazz musician who had a flat near the station told me he would like to offer it to refugees, as his contribution to their journey. That evening, Viktor and I let Haneen and her extended family into the small flat in Marek József Street. They were delighted to have a little privacy, to have warm running water, a shower, and real beds for the first time in weeks. Later, Viktor took them shopping for basic provisions. They stayed there for nearly a week. The streets around the station were full of refugees, smugglers and police on the prowl. I was worried for the girls in particular, and we devised roundabout routes, to get them to the flat. I could hardly believe I was doing this in twenty-first-century Hungary – helping refugees down a tightrope between those trying to lock them up, and others trying to rob them.
Refugees like Haneen and Rama had spent two days at Kiskunhalas, before being put on a train to Budapest. From there, they were supposed to go on to a more permanent camp at Debrecen or Bicske. Each morning trains from Kiskunhalas, packed with several hundred refugees, arrived at the Köbánya-Kispest suburban station in Budapest. They were supposed to change for the Debrecen train. Instead, they changed to a different platform, and travelled the short distance into the west station instead, swelling the numbers already there, trying to move on westwards. Volunteers from Migration Aid were waiting for the trains, and distributed aid packages from the stocks pouring in each day from Hungarian well-wishers. One man I spoke to, Zaid Majid from Baghdad, said he had climbed over the fence with his friends. It was only half a metre high he said. But some were not so lucky, suffering bad cuts as they clambered over the razor wire.
Each of the passageways beneath the east station was overcrowded with people resting and sleeping. Some put up tents, others just slept on mattresses or cardboard, like the homeless who lived there in less troubled times.
‘Every day in Syria, we died several times,’ a young woman, Zana, twenty-one, told me. ‘How come the world sees this, and does nothing? Look at the babies, the children!’
Meeran, also twenty-one, from Afghanistan, said he had seen so much death in his home country. The killing of his friends and his brothers. He wanted to reach the UK or Ireland, he said, anywhere where he could live in peace, in freedom, with human rights. He, like the others, was overwhelmed by the kindness of the volunteers.
The Hungarian government’s decision to build the fence, block the refugees and criminalise the migrants earned it the approbation of governments across Europe. Hungary’s young foreign minister Péter Szijjártó, thirty-six, appeared at times both abrasive and undiplomatic. In quick succession in late August his government’s policies were attacked by the French foreign minister Laurent Fabius and the Austrian chancellor Werner Faymann, as going ‘against European values’. In an interview in Le Monde, also carried by French public service radio and the rolling TV news channel I-Télé on 30 August, Fabius described the conduct of East European countries towards the refugees as ‘scandalous’.18 He condemned ‘in the strongest possible way’ Hungary in particular, for building a fence ‘which would not be put up for animals, let alone for the protection of values’. The new fence should be taken down, and the EU should lead serious and tough talks with the Hungarian leadership.
Szijjártó summoned the French ambassador and told the press he was ‘shocked’ by Fabius’s words.19 ‘Some people in Europe still don’t understand how big and how dramatic the pressure is in Hungary because of the arrival of so many illegal migrants across its borders. A good Europe is one which keeps its own rules,’ he said, referring to the Schengen agreement, rather than the Dublin one which Hungary had suspended the previous month. ‘Instead of attacking one another, we should seek a common solution – how to stop the migrant pressure.’ Hungary was just defending its own, and the EU’s outer boundaries, he said. And if their countries, starting with Greece, were to do the same, at least part of the problem would be solved.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, whose election Hungary had, with Britain, bitterly opposed, also took the side of the asylum seekers. ‘The EU will never turn away those people who need our help.’ The real Europe is personified, he said, by ‘those Hungarian volunteers who give food and toys to hungry, exhausted refugee children’. Europe is ‘those students in [the German town of] Siegen who opened their dormitory to refugees . . . the baker on the island of Kos who distributes bread to hungry and weary people. This is the Europe I want to live in.’ ‘By hiding behind fences we can’t barricade ourselves from all fears and sufferings,’ he added, to rub salt into the wounds. The article was published in the opposition daily, Népszabadság.20
The biggest problem Szijjártó faced was not the migrants themselves – they were suffering a sort of malign neglect from his government – but rather the gulf opening rapidly between his policies and those of Western Europe. The Fidesz government’s vision of a ‘Fortress Europe’, barring those it regarded as ‘illegal migrants’, was on a collision course with the policies of other countries – Austria, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian countries and to some extent France, th
at Europe should be a ‘safe haven’ for ‘genuine refugees’. This was also an argument about time, and legislation. Critics of the Hungarian government, at home and abroad, argued that the new fence, the transit zones which would be built into it, and the fast-track legal procedures, including putting those caught crossing the fence on trial in Szeged, broke Hungary’s humanitarian obligations under the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees. Hungarian officials argued that the convention was out of date, and that this was not a humanitarian crisis, but a security one.
On 28 August, I interviewed Babar Baloch, the regional spokesman for the UNHCR, in the cornfield at Röszke. By now the encampment had spread to the other side of the road as well. As we spoke, police tried to keep the road open for traffic. Every new hour a cream and orange coloured bus or coach, hired by the police, pulled up to take the refugees in the field to the registration centre near the motorway crossing, just 3 kilometres away. The migrants would happily have walked the distance if it had been explained to them. But as usual, there was no communication. The police had not been provided with interpreters, and as a result, no one understood what was going on, and why the people in the field had to spend twenty-four, thirty-six or even forty-eight hours waiting in the hot sun, with too little food, water and toilet facilities.
‘When desperate people like refugees have no legal avenues to cross over into Europe and continue the journeys where they’re seeking safety, they fall into the hands of ruthless smugglers – and this is what happens,’ Babar, himself from the troubled Baluchistan region of Pakistan, explained. I put it to him that the authorities were at last, though painfully slowly, getting organised to cope with the influx.
It is encouraging to see that people who need access to help in Hungary are being allowed in. But the worry is also the fence. People crawling under the barbed wire fence or trying to come over it. That shouldn’t be there for refugees and asylum seekers.
We are asking, not only from the Hungarians but from the Europeans also, for a robust system which works in helping these people. So far this system is dysfunctional here.
CHAPTER FIVE
A REFUGEE VICTORY
This is a good country, in a good condition . . . And it makes me proud to see so many people from civil society selflessly helping refugees . . . The number of helpers is many times higher than the number of rabble-rousers and xenophobes.
Angela Merkel1
The new Iron Curtain is for us, not against us.
Viktor Orbán2
On Monday 31 August, German chancellor Angela Merkel spoke at the traditional summer federal press conference in Berlin.3 It should have been held on 17 July but was delayed because of talks in Greece on the financial crisis. Dressed in a bright pink trouser suit and looking surprisingly relaxed after a summer with little time for a vacation of her own, the German chancellor took the lead that no other statesman in Europe dared to – one which surprised friends and foes alike. Rewatching her speech on YouTube, news from the front lines of the crisis flashes along the bottom of the screen: ‘Bavaria and Austria sharpen their border controls in the struggle against smugglers’, ‘Hungary allows refugees in trains to leave for Germany.’ And a strange one from the Pro-Asyl group: ‘Number of Balkan refugees falls sharply.’ Ever a cautious leader in her ten years in the job, she now made clear that Germany was prepared to help. In August alone 104,460 asylum seekers had entered her country and many more were on their way.
‘What is happening now in Europe is not a natural catastrophe, but a multitude of catastrophic situations,’ she began. The death of the seventy-one migrants in the meat truck in Austria the previous week was ‘an inconceivable atrocity’.
She spoke of the exhaustion and existential fears and traumas of those who had fled Syria, northern Iraq and Eritrea. These were the three countries the EU was about to introduce relocation quotas for. She stressed the importance of clear, humanitarian principles in dealing with asylum seekers. And she mentioned that the revised estimate of those expected to reach Germany in 2015 was now 800,000.
‘We should be proud of the humanitarian principles enshrined in the Basic Law,’ she said. ‘The second fundamental principle is the principle of human dignity – which is assured in Article 1 of the Basic Law [. . .] We respect the dignity of each individual.’ Germany was not offering automatic asylum to everyone, she explained, but every application would get a fair hearing, based on German law and respect for their humanity.
By that time there had already been 200 attacks on hostels for asylum seekers that year in Germany, and she turned next on those guilty of that violence. ‘We will apply the full force of the law against those who verbally or physically attack others, who torch shelters or try to resort to violence. There is zero tolerance for those who call into question the dignity of others.’ And she appealed to her fellow Germans to keep away from such protests where people showed ‘the hatred in their hearts’. ‘The reason so many people dream of a new life in Germany, is that they have suffered persecution, war and despotism in their own.’
‘What should Germany do in the face of such a huge challenge?’ she asked. More of the same, only better. At a meeting with the prime ministers of the regions in June, the scale of the task facing them was already clear, she said. The solution should be a combination of German thoroughness and flexibility – qualities shown in its handling of German reunification, the Eurozone crisis, the Wende – the switchover from nuclear to renewable energy.
More reception centres would be set up. Over the next three weeks, a comprehensive package of measures would be worked out between central and regional government. Asylum procedures would be speeded up. Rapid decisions on repatriation would be needed in cases where applicants stood no prospect of staying in Germany. This referred particularly, but not exclusively, to the tens of thousands of migrants coming from Kosovo and Albania whom I had encountered in Ásotthalom in February. Most were still in Germany, resisting efforts to send them home. Parallel to this, more efforts should be put into integrating those who would be given leave to stay in Germany. More teachers of German would be needed, she said. Then she turned to the European response.
‘Europe as a whole must get its act together. The European states must share responsibility for refugees seeking asylum.’ Universal civil rights remained the essential European values, she said. Germany and France agreed on what needed to be done next. Consultations would now be held with other countries.
‘Merkel the bold,’ wrote The Economist.4 ‘On refugees, Germany’s chancellor is brave, decisive and right.’
On 31 August Mrs Merkel issued a dramatic call to arms, warning that today’s refugee misery will have graver consequences for the future of the EU than the euro mess. ‘If Europe fails on the question of refugees,’ she said, ‘it won’t be the Europe we wished for.’ She is right. The EU was born after a devastating war, on a promise of solidarity with the persecuted and downtrodden. The biggest displacement of people since 1945 is a test of European values, and of the ability of member states to work together. The refugees from civil wars in Syria and Iraq clearly need help; and European countries can provide it only if they share the task. That means a collective response.
Few other European politicians have had the courage to make such a clear link between Europe’s values, its collective self-interest and bold action on refugees . . . Many Eastern European politicians have resorted to xenophobia, refusing to welcome refugees for resettlement even as their citizens enjoy the benefits of borderless travel. No doubt Mrs Merkel is driven, in part, by domestic concerns . . . But a desire to share the burden should not be mistaken for selfishness. In a crisis where Europe has little to be proud of, Mrs Merkel’s leadership is a shining exception.
The political debate in Europe about how to handle the influx now had two poles, Angela Merkel and Viktor Orbán. This was a remarkable achievement for the Hungarian prime minister, in an EU dominated by Germany, France and other rich countries. Orbán put himself forward as
the champion, not just of the ‘sensible people of East and Central Europe’, but of everyone in Western Europe concerned by the arrival of so many people of other cultures. There was just one nod in the Chancellor’s ninety-seven-minute press conference towards Hungary. Germany ‘greatly appreciates’ Hungary’s efforts to register all refugees, she said.
Angela Merkel repeatedly used the word refugees (Flüchtlinge) in her speeches. Viktor Orbán and his publicity machine insisted on ‘illegal immigrants’ or simply ‘migrants’. And ‘migrants’ became increasingly pejorative in Hungarian usage as time went by.
In January 2015, during the visit of the Turkish prime minister, Merkel said that ‘Islam is part of Europe’. Orbán seemed ignorant of both the extent to which Islam was already part of the continent, and of the rich cultural diversity in many countries. Like others who saw Islam itself as a threat to Christian Europe, he also failed to recognise the great diversity of views among Muslims and the extent to which most European Muslims share the same values as other Europeans.
Merkel based her choice of words, and her welcome to refugees, on data provided by the UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration. This showed that the majority of those reaching Europe were coming from countries where they suffered the effects of war or persecution. Viktor Orbán suggested on the other hand that the ‘vast majority’ were economic migrants. His ally, the Slovak prime minister Robert Fico put a figure to it: ‘Up to 95 per cent are economic migrants,’ he claimed. Who was telling the truth? The Economist decided to study the figures. Asylum applications from citizens of seven countries had rates of acceptance (of asylum or protected status) of over 50 per cent in the first quarter of 2015 in the EU: Syria, Eritrea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.