by Nick Thorpe
Austria would spend around €2 billion accommodating and integrating refugees in 2016, he said. Kern might understand, even praise Hungary on one level, but he also warned Hungary, like all other countries, to accept its quota of asylum seekers:
Unless we are able to resolve this problem, then the entire European project, rooted as it is in solidarity and commonality, will be at stake. Such is the scale of the problem, that no one has any right to shirk his responsibility. In the long term, this would not be acceptable.
*
Back in Hungary, already in August, the government had launched recruitment for a new unit of ‘border-hunters’ in the police. The name was unfortunate, coming at a time of numerous allegations of Hungarian police brutality against migrants. My sources in the police insisted that there was no policy of brutality, and that the top brass were doing all they could to ensure human rights standards were respected, and to avoid recruiting new officers with racist views.
Three thousand border-hunters, who would also be full police officers, were needed to reinforce the southern border. It was to be the most modern recruitment campaign ever launched by the police. Posters appeared across the country, on Facebook, and on the police.hu website. Three smiling police officers, one tall, one short and one female, in dark red caps, looking into the camera. Applicants should be over eighteen, Hungarian citizens with A-levels, be physically fit, and will have to pass a psychological test to make sure they are suitable. Pay would be €484 a month for the first two months, increasing to €710 from then on. The new recruits, like existing officers, would be armed with pistols, pepper spray, truncheons, handcuffs and protective equipment. They would be deployed after six months’ training, from May 2017.
The number of migrants and refugees reaching the Hungarian border though the western Balkan route had fallen to less than 200 a day since the start of the year. Thirty were allowed into Hungary each day through the transit zones, fifteen at Röszke, fifteen at Kelebia. The Balkan route, despite Donald Tusk’s words, was still open, but just a crack.
During the early summer of 2016, in May, June and the first half of July, fifty to sixty refugees on average managed to reach the nearest Greek islands from the Turkish coast in their small boats. After the failed coup in Turkey on 15 July, that number doubled to 112 a day, and stayed at that level through August and September. The Turkish police had other things on their mind – rounding up suspected coup plotters, or themselves falling under suspicion, as President Erdoğan purged the state administration of anyone suspected of ‘Gulenist’ allegiance. The EU–Turkey agreement, in force since 20 May, was beginning to stumble. There was also a suspicion in some, West European quarters, that the Turkish government eased the police presence on the west coast to warn the EU that the ‘refugee weapon’ could still be activated.
The newcomers were mostly stranded on the islands in leaky detention camps where they were held while the Greek Asylum Service assessed their claims. By September, there were around 14,000 on the five islands, compared to 8,450 in mid-June. They could easily leave the camps through holes in the fence to visit local villages, but as there was nowhere else to go they returned to their overcrowded camps through the same holes. There were no more ferryloads of migrants to Piraeus. Around 3,000 refugees, nevertheless, managed to reach the mainland on scheduled ferries during those three summer months – an average of just over thirty a day.
Comparisons had begun to be made between Greece and the Pacific island of Nauru, where Australia sends all migrants attempting to reach her shores by sea, for their claims to be assessed. It was also clear that while the EU–Turkey agreement still had a strong braking effect on the migration of people between the Middle East and Western Europe, many aspects of the agreement were not working. In their September assessment of the agreement, the ESI wrote that 9,250 people reached Greece from Turkey by boat during the summer months, and only 116 of these were returned.15 These formed one part of the 578 asylum seekers returned from the Greek islands to the Turkish mainland from mid-March till the end of September.
In September, the European Commission published an upbeat update on the success of their agreement with Turkey. But it did admit some weaknesses. The Greek Asylum Service was working too slowly, the authors grumbled. Human rights lawyers in Greece argued that Turkey was still not a ‘safe’ country to return refugees to. Almost all of those sentenced to return from the islands appealed, and most won cases brought to the newly established Greek Appeals Authority.16
‘The Greek Asylum Service can take two kinds of decisions,’ the ESI wrote:
Firstly, on admissibility. In this case it concludes that since Turkey is safe for an applicant, no asylum decision is required in Greece. The application in Greece would be found inadmissible and the applicant could be returned to Turkey. If the applicant is a Syrian, he or she would get temporary protection in Turkey. If the applicant is a non-Syrian, he or she should submit an asylum claim there. Alternatively, the Greek Asylum Service could conduct a full asylum procedure in Greece. In that case the applicant can only be returned to Turkey, as an illegal immigrant, if protection is denied.
The Greek Asylum Service does not even conduct admissibility procedures with non-Syrians such as Afghans, Iraqis and Pakistanis since it does not consider Turkey a safe third country for non-Syrian refugees.
Over the six months of the operation of the EU–Turkey agreement, the ESI concluded scathingly, only six asylum claims had been judged inadmissible on the Greek islands. A total of sixteen Greek asylum workers were now present on the islands, the study found, together with forty-one asylum experts drafted in from other EU countries:
At the heart of the EU–Turkey agreement is the goal to discourage irregular crossings by returning most of those who arrive on Greek islands to Turkey following a credible assessment of their asylum claims. It is hard to explain why there is no more serious discussion in the [EU] report on why this is not happening.
The growing numbers on the islands were leading to growing tensions between locals and migrants, especially on Lesbos and Chios. On 14 September, a march by residents protesting against what they saw as the takeover of their island by asylum seekers ended in violence as police used teargas to prevent them reaching the camp.
On 19 September, a fire broke out at the overcrowded Moria camp on Lesbos. Fifty prefabricated homes burnt down, and more than 5,000 people living in the camp fled into the surrounding fields. In the chaos which followed, local people and police tried to send the migrants back towards their burning camp.
How could the situation be solved? While the ESI report’s authors preferred the proper implementation of an agreement which they themselves had proposed, the more likely conclusion, they feared, was that the Greek authorities would simply restart the big ferries – and ship migrants from the overcrowded islands to the overcrowded mainland. If that happened, the pressure on the Greek-Macedonian border would grow to breaking point again, and if large columns of refugees starting winding their way up through the Balkans in the rains of autumn and the snows of winter, this would ‘provide a boost to leaders such as Viktor Orbán, who have long argued that in order to control its external borders the EU ought to be prepared to set aside human rights concerns, treating migrants as an “invading army” and suspending the application of the refugee convention’. It could also help further disintegrate the EU, with elections ahead in France, the Netherlands and Germany in 2017. All of this would add to the ‘political momentum of the anti-refugee, populist far-right’.
Up to a hundred refugees a day continued to make it through the Turkish-Bulgarian border, despite the ever-lengthening fence and the tough reputation of the Bulgarian border guards. Of the 60,000 refugees trapped on the Greek mainland, up to a hundred more managed to make it through Macedonia to Serbia each day too. This added up to about 200 people a day reaching Belgrade. There they surfaced for a while, like fish coming up for air. In Belgrade, they slept first in makeshift camps near the rail
way and bus stations. Then they gravitated to one of the thirteen camps around the country set up by the Serbian Commissariat for Refugees.
The ESI published its own proposals. The EU should acknowledge the genuine concerns of both the Greeks and the Turks, and offer credible support to both, to help the few thousand most vulnerable asylum claimants. The EU should recognise what the Greek Asylum Service had been arguing for months, that Turkey is not yet a safe country. Finally, an EU social envoy should be appointed, to oversee the agreement and maintain contact with Turkish officials.
The Turkish government does not want to fight smugglers in a fruitless battle along its Aegean coast, nor have more dead children washed up on its shores. Turkey also has a strong national interest in not wanting anti-refugee, anti-Muslim forces to get even stronger in 2017 in key EU member states.
Above all, Turkey needed to do much more, with EU help, to prove that it is a safe third country to which the Greeks need have no qualms in returning migrants. If that was done, the EU should have no hesitation in fulfilling its side of the bargain – to allow visa-free travel for Turkish citizens in the Schengen group of countries.
If these ideas were not implemented, the authors warned, chaos might result:
The Macedonian reception and asylum system would collapse within weeks if more people were to cross the border. Serbia would face a similar crisis. As winter sets in, the western Balkans would turn into a battleground between migrants, smugglers, border guards, soldiers and vigilante groups, destabilising an already fragile region. And ever larger numbers of people would begin to cross again into Central Europe.
*
In Hungary, the referendum campaign entered its final week. In parliament, Gábor Vona, leader of the increasingly centrist but still nationalist Jobbik party, addressed Viktor Orbán across the floor of the house.
We are glad you have joined us to support a Europe of Nations. [. . .] In Western Europe multiculturalism is now the reality. It is not a question there of whether to live in a multicultural society or not, but how to live there. While here in Central East Europe, we still have the chance to decide. And I believe we should vote not to.
The referendum was, after all, originally a Jobbik idea, so Jobbik could hardly not back it now. But, Vona argued, if it failed to be valid by not reaching the required 50 per cent, it would give Brussels a stick with which to beat Hungary. Instead, Vona argued, it would have been much simpler, and cheaper, to simply change the constitution to make it impossible to accept quotas. He called on Orbán to resign if turnout did not reach 50 per cent. He went on:
You have used the theme of the flood of migrants like an Arabian magic carpet, which flies away among the clouds, in order to avoid seeing the Hungarian reality. And if the carpet lands somewhere, you sweep the problems under the carpet! The problems of education, of health, of corruption. Because what is the reality here? Prime Minister, the reality is that while you play Jean de Savoy in Brussels, your foot-soldiers are stealing the country at home!
Jean de Savoy was the Habsburg general famed for his battles with Ottoman forces in the seventeenth century, and for burning much of the beautiful city of Sarajevo to the ground. ‘There will be no legal consequences of the referendum, because the referendum question is not within the competence of the Hungarian Parliament,’ commented Robert László of the leftist Political Capital think tank. ‘On the political level, however, there could be consequences, because Viktor Orbán wants to be a really heavyweight European politician. He wants to be leading figure of the strengthening nation-states within Europe.’
Referendum day was 2 October, a Sunday. I visited voting stations in several parts of Budapest, finishing in Újlipótváros, the increasingly gentrified district between the Danube and the west railway station, and the only one in the city still controlled by the Socialists. There was a steady turnout of mainly older people, vehement Fidesz supporters. But younger people mostly refused to take part.
Everything hinged on turnout. By early evening, it was clear that the 50 per cent hurdle, necessary to make the result valid, would not be reached. The final figures showed 39.8 per cent voted, while a further 6 per cent spoilt their ballots – an unprecedentedly high number in Hungary.17
Journalists gathered to hear Orbán’s reaction in the ‘Whale’, a converted warehouse on the Danube shore in Pest. Only cameramen and women were allowed upstairs to the second floor, where Orbán made a brief, carefully rehearsed statement: ‘Brussels or Budapest. That was the question, and we have decided that the right to decide [who Hungarians want to live with] lies solely with Budapest.’ The constitution would be amended accordingly, Orbán said, to ‘reflect the will of the people’. ‘The weapon will be strong enough in Brussels too. Brussels cannot force its will on Hungary.’18
An ally of the prime minister told me that he was initially devastated by the failure of the referendum.19 His spin-doctors reassured him that he could portray the result as a victory, as 98 per cent of those who cast a valid vote voted ‘No’ to allowing the EU to ‘mandate the obligatory resettlement of non-Hungarian citizens into Hungary even without the approval of the National Assembly’. To make sure this interpretation became widespread, the Fidesz media, especially the tabloids, echoed references to this great victory for weeks on end. And more giant billboards appeared all over the country. The Hungarian people ‘had spoken’.
That message was met with incredulity by all the Hungarians who had voted with their feet to boycott the referendum, and across Europe. ‘The Hungarians are more European than their government,’ said Luxembourg foreign minister Jean Asselborn. ‘This is a bad day for Viktor Orbán and good day for Hungary and the European Union.’ The government had spent €48 million asking people to vote ‘no’ who would have voted ‘no’ anyway, and stirred up even more xenophobia in a country treated to a monotonous diet of xenophobia by the government since January 2015.20
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A SLOW AND PAINFUL EUROPE
Yes, Europe is slow. It is painful. It has deep cuts like the withdrawal of a member state. And, yes, Europe should focus on what it can really do better than the nation state . . .
But where Europe – in global competition, in protecting our external borders or migration – faces issues together, it must find answers together. No matter how arduous and tough that is.
Angela Merkel, 1 January 20171
In mid-December 2016, Hungary’s ‘best’ refugee camp at Bicske was closed after thirty-six years, partly because it was unpopular in the Fidesz-run town, and because very few refugees were actually crossing into Hungary any more – despite the continuous scaremongering. The last residents were moved out at only an hour’s notice.
The last sixty residents of the camp were scattered to the four winds. Some to the camp in Balassagyarmat, some to Vámosszabadi, and three to the homeless shelter in Grassalkovich street in Budapest, run by a Baptist charity. Antal Grassalkovich was a Hungarian noble, born in 1694 in Ürmény, now in southern Slovakia. He was famous for his work helping German immigrants settle in Hungary during the reign of the Empress Maria Theresa.
Those sent to Körmend were in the worst situation. The tents where they were rehoused had wooden floors and rudimentary wood-burning stoves in the middle, but there was no insulation of any kind. A local Catholic priest, Zoltán Németh invited the asylum seekers from their cold tents to his warm guest house instead. His gesture made national news, because of its rarity.2 The only parallel anyone could remember was when Asztrik Várszegi, arch-abbot of the Pannonhalma monastery, welcomed Syrian asylum seekers in September 2015, contradicting a statement from Archbishop Péter Erdö that churches should not open their doors, as that would be tantamount to helping smugglers.
A press conference was set for 11 a.m. Father Németh introduced me to Gabriella Sári, from the Sant’Egidio foundation, a Catholic social-workers charity which had been active at Bicske. She had spent several months in Syria, restoring icons in churches before t
he war, and got to know some of those transferred to Körmend through her work. She contacted Father Németh, and he immediately offered them shelter.
One of the men, Thomas, talked to me in the kitchen of the guest block of the parish. He was from west Cameroon and had been in Hungary for three years, first in the camp in Debrecen, which the government closed at the end of 2015, then in Bicske. It seemed that he was running out of places to go.
He left Cameroon for Kenya in 2013, he explained, on a scholarship to study there. In Nairobi he applied for and received a visa to visit Hungary, and flew to Budapest. He was arrested in Hungary when his visa ran out and had been moved since then from camp to camp. The only reason he would be granted asylum in Hungary as a Cameroonian citizen, he was told privately by an employee of the Immigration Office, was if he was gay.
Even last week on the BBC there were reports of people being slaughtered and killed because they were protesting. Officials here say my application for asylum is delayed because I have contradicted myself in the six interviews I have had so far. But I have proved that I was suffering persecution again and again, but nothing has changed.
According to the BBC website, riots had indeed broken out in the city of Bamenda in the north-west of the country in November, after the authorities tried to impose French-speaking teachers and court officials in predominantly English-speaking areas.3 Cameroon was a German colony, divided into British and French areas after the First World War. English is still the main language in the southwest and northwest regions along the border with Nigeria. All the other eight regions are Francophone. One protester claimed that the 10 million English-speaking citizens of the country had been marginalised for fifty years. All English-speaking schools had temporarily been shut because of the troubles. I wondered how much the immigration officials keep up with shifting events in the countries of origin.
Thomas went on:
