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Migrants Clash With Police in Hungary, as Others Enter Croatia Migrants Clash With Police in Hungary, as Others Enter Croatia
(about 3 hours later)
HORGOS, Serbia — Hungarian police officers moved against hundreds of migrants on Wednesday, attacking them with batons, water cannons and tear gas after they tried to surge through a border crossing that had been blocked for a second day. HORGOS, Serbia — In one of the worst bursts of violence that this tense refugee summer has seen, Hungarian riot police responded on Wednesday to rocks, taunts and small fires set by agitated migrants at the border crossing here with water cannons, head-cracking batons and both tear gas and pepper spray.
The migrants tore down a razor-wire gate on the Serbian side of the border crossing, and were pushing through to a second gate on the Hungarian side when the riot police drove them back. Twenty people were injured, including two children who had been thrown across the fence into Hungary, and taken to a hospital, the authorities said. Although the word was quickly spreading along the migrant trail that heading toward Croatia from Serbia was a better bet than trying to push through the heavily guarded border into Hungary, hundreds of straggling refugees continued to turn up at the crossing here in hopes that Hungary would change its mind and let them through.
But the migrants soon started fires and threw rocks toward the police officers, who then came at them with batons, beating their way through the crowd. The clash followed two days of frustration for the migrants, some of whom arrived here soon after Hungary imposed tough new laws on Tuesday to prevent their passage into the country, and enforced the laws with armed police officers at a reinforced border with Serbia. But Hungary did not change its mind — prompting a grim demonstration of what can happen when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.
It was the first major clash on the land route from Turkey since Aug. 21, when the Macedonian police used stun grenades to break up a group of migrants trying to cross the border into their country from Greece. And the demonstration is likely to continue as more migrants and refugees try to escape war and poverty in their homelands and find a new life in a continent that cannot agree on what to do with them. Already, the migrant trail was adapting, finding new ways to reach western Europe.
Already some of the migrants who had reached the crossing had given up and peeled off, heading for new routes through Croatia and other countries on their journey west, where they hope to apply for asylum in places like Germany and Sweden. Tension had been building through the afternoon. About 2,500 migrants had set up camp along the narrow, two-lane road leading to the small crossing here — nothing more than a cluster of battered buildings and two lines of fence, topped with razor wire.
But about 2,000 remained behind, still hoping that Hungary would reconsider, as it had done once before, and let them pass to Austria, on buses or by train. On the Serbian side of the green fence that marked the border zone was a squalid encampment of tents, swirling trash, wailing children and a few Serbian police officers, watching the chaos unfold. On the Hungarian side, beyond a second fence, were hundreds of police officers, some with protective shields and full riot gear, others in crisp uniforms and red caps, standing in formation and ignoring the crowds peeking at them.
By late afternoon, the calm, almost-festive atmosphere at an informal encampment at the closed crossing point grew increasingly tense, and hundreds of migrants pressed the border. One young man held up an orange sign reading “Right to Travel.” Others read, “Europe, your humanity is lost” and “Hungaria Please Help Us.”
“Open! Open! Open!” the migrants chanted. About 50 riot police officers formed a barrier. A vehicle armed with water cannons stood nearby. Military helicopters hovered overhead. The crowd had been told that, as of Tuesday, when new refugee laws went into effect in Hungary, migrants would not be allowed across the border if they had not been fingerprinted and approved, and that crossing the border illegally became a major offense punishable with years in prison.
The police fired tear gas. Many of the migrants gagged and poured water over their eyes to stop the sting, but the action drove them back. But having gotten this far from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and other desperate countries, they grasped at hopes that the Hungarians would relent — just as they did when a huge migrant encampment sprouted outside the main train station in Budapest this month.
Throngs of young men then set trash and wood on fire. Others hurled blocks of charred wood and stones at the fence, and at the police officers guarding it. Aid workers moved through the crowd, trying to persuade the migrants to pull back and give Croatia a try, and many said that they were about to give up and follow that advice.
The police appeared to pull back, and suddenly the gate opened. “It’s open, it’s open, bye bye Serbia,” some of the migrants shouted. But as they started to push through, the police came at them, beating at them with their batons, as many were trampled in a rush back to the Serbian side. Still, the crowd grew increasingly impatient, and 200 or so people pushed up against the first gate, removing its razor wire and breaking it open at 3 p.m. A second, lower fence remained closed, a few yards farther into the border zone.
The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, responded with outrage to news footage of the clash. “I was shocked to see how these refugees and migrants were treated,” he said. “It’s not acceptable.” A squad of about 100 riot police officers moved into the area just behind that second fence and an armored vehicle, topped with water cannons, came next.
Hungary’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, blamed unruly migrants for the clash. “Open! Open!” the crowd chanted. Excited young men clambered on top of that first gate, which had been broken open, and began bouncing up and down on it, trying to knock it off its hinges.
International emergency relief officials expressed alarm about the standoff at the border and said they feared it may portend more violence as the patience of the migrants runs out and many refuse to move. All of a sudden, an invisible, noxious gas began to pour into the crowd from the Hungarian side. In a panic, the people nearest the gate began to scramble backward, pushing people aside as they flailed, tears streaming from their eyes. Children grabbed for their parents. Some tossed oranges and apples they had been carrying back at the riot police, ineffectually. People ran into one another, tripped, fell.
People grabbed for bottles of water offered by volunteers along the roadside, slapping it onto their faces and trying to wash the gas out of their eyes and hair.
The crowd collapsed into chaos and ran back into Serbia. Then, the crowd re-formed and slowly moved forward again. And again, there was a gas attack.
Grabbing piles of wood and bits of trash, a few dozen migrants responded by building small fires in the road and surrounding fields, the acrid smell of burning plastic bags filling the air.
The armored vehicle fired its water cannons toward the crowd and the fires, putting some of them out and turning the area into a swamp.
Meanwhile, other migrants went behind a battered building marked Duty Free Shop and began breaking crumbling concrete and hurling pieces toward the Hungarian police, who were lined up just out of range.
“It has been pressure, pressure, for more than a day now,” said Rafy, 36, a high school geography teacher from Swiada, Syria, who watched the rock throwing from a safe distance. “It is like a balloon filling up. Eventually it must burst.” He declined to give his last name, fearing that the family he left behind would be persecuted by Syrian officials.
The stone-throwing subsided when word spread that the Hungarians had opened the second gate. The armored vehicle had moved about 50 yards farther into the border zone.
“It is open! It is open!” people shouted, and about 200 or 300 people formed cautiously on the Serbian side and began to walk slowly through the gate and toward the armored vehicle. “Thank you, Serbia!” one migrant shouted as he pushed forward, clutching his sad sack of belongings.
As soon as the crowd drew nearer to the armored vehicles, dozens of riot police officers appeared, shields aloft. The crowd paused, waited, and then the police surged forward, batons swinging. With a crack, crack, crack, tear gas canisters arced through the air and fell all around the suddenly frantic crowd.
The gas swirled through the scampering crowd and, again, people begged for water and tried to thread a path through the chaos to fresh air.
“We heard the crowd had opened the gate, so we came to see,” said Mohamed Abdoulhanin, 25, a food safety supervisor from Damascus. “We expected them to let us in and they attacked us. Why?”
Although he had been hoping Hungary would relent, after more than a day at the closed gate, Mr. Abdoulhanin said he had given up.
“This is the worst thing that has happened to me on the whole journey,” he said. “I want to live in Austria. It is so close. Just one country away! I guess I will try Croatia.”
By twilight, the crowd had calmed again and the riot police remained in place at the border. People began preparing dinner in their windblown tents, but a growing stream of people walked along the road back into Serbia saying they would give Croatia a chance.
The government said that 14 police officers had been injured, but the only injured people in evidence were people who had been trampled, hit with batons or flattened by the gas. Several people gasped for air on the ground next to ambulances.
“This is not a peaceful crowd that wants to travel through peacefully,” said Zoltan Kovacs, the Hungarian government’s chief international spokesman.
Hungarian officials put part of the blame on the Serbian police, who were barely a presence during the afternoon and did nothing to subdue or control the crowd.
“We can’t see the functioning of the Serbian police, even though this is on Serbian territory,” said Gyorgy Bakondi, an aide to Prime Minister Viktor Orban. “We are going to take all legal steps to ensure Hungary’s security. Armed, aggressive, attacking people cannot enter.”
Aleksandar Vulin, the Serbian minister for labor, employment and social policy, responded by expressing “the harshest possible protest” to the Hungarian police firing their water cannons into Serbian territory.
“The water cannon reached the Serbian side,” he said. “A state does not have the right to do that.”
International emergency relief officials said they feared the clash may portend more violence as the patience of the migrants runs out and many refuse to move.
“These people already have covered thousands of kilometers to get to that point,” said Balazs Lehel, program coordinator in the Budapest office of the International Organization for Migration. “They’re so tired and frustrated that they don’t have the strength to get up again and find another route.”“These people already have covered thousands of kilometers to get to that point,” said Balazs Lehel, program coordinator in the Budapest office of the International Organization for Migration. “They’re so tired and frustrated that they don’t have the strength to get up again and find another route.”
Still, with the Hungarian border blocked, many migrants began to seek other routes to western Europe, showing their determination to leave behind war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa. But many were already doing so.
Countries like Croatia — through which they could bypass Hungary — were preparing for mass arrivals. Croatia’s prime minister promised the asylum seekers safe movement, as long as they were only passing through the country. About 320 had entered Croatia by late afternoon, according to the United Nations refugee agency. Nearly 600 migrants crossed the border from Serbia into the small Croatian town of Tovarnik by Wednesday evening, navigating through a processing center before boarding buses heading toward a reception center in the capital, Zagreb.
But humanitarian groups raised concerns that migrants seeking to get to Croatia could inadvertently cross through areas near the Hungarian-Croatian border that are littered with thousands of land mines left from the Balkan wars of the 1990s. On Wednesday, Croatian demining experts were sent to the area where many migrants were arriving, Reuters reported. Croatia’s prime minister promised the asylum seekers safe movement, as long as they were only passing through the country. But humanitarian groups raised concerns that migrants could inadvertently cross through areas near the Hungarian-Croatian border that are littered with thousands of land mines left from the Balkan wars of the 1990s. On Wednesday, Croatian demining experts were sent to the area where many migrants were arriving, Reuters reported.
Hungary moved to close off another alternative, by tightening its border with Romania. That prompted an angry response from Victor Ponta, Romania’s prime minister, who said that Hungary was violating the European Union’s ideals of peace and unity. “Fences, dogs, police, weapons: This looks like the 1930s,” he was quoted as saying by the Romanian news service Mediafax. Hungary had moved swiftly to show that it would enforce its new laws. On Wednesday, the government announced that police officers had detained 519 people for illegal entry or damaging a border fence since the new rules came into force a day earlier. The authorities have opened 46 criminal cases, and the first suspects were to appear in court Wednesday afternoon, according to Mr. Bakondi, the prime minister’s aide.
The ripple effects reached as far as Istanbul, were hundreds of migrants were huddled in informal camps after they were stopped from leaving Turkey or picked up on highways and brought back to the city. Still, some had made it to Edirne, on the European side of Turkey, where migrants thronged a bus station in the hope of getting clearance to walk to the border with Greece. Court officials in Szeged, Hungary, said that nine adults — seven from Iraq, two from Syria — would be deported for illegally crossing, after expedited court proceedings.
The ripple effects of Hungary’s crackdown reached as far as Istanbul, where hundreds of migrants were huddled in informal camps after they were prevented from leaving Turkey or picked up on highways and brought back to the city. Still, some had made it to Edirne, on the European side of Turkey, where migrants thronged a bus station in the hope of getting clearance to walk to the border with Greece, and some threatened a hunger strike until they were let through.
“We’ll go to Greece, then Serbia, but skip Hungary and go through Slovenia, instead,” said one Syrian migrant, Ghassen Tekriti, who arrived in Edirne on Tuesday.“We’ll go to Greece, then Serbia, but skip Hungary and go through Slovenia, instead,” said one Syrian migrant, Ghassen Tekriti, who arrived in Edirne on Tuesday.
At the border town of Horgos, Serbia, migrants, who had slept in tents overnight, lined up for food. There were just 11 toilets and two taps with running water for them. The temperature reached a sweltering 86 degrees Fahrenheit. At the Macedonian border and in towns like Kanjiza, Serbia, where migrants had pooled in recent months before making the trek across the Hungarian border, buses appeared Wednesday, offering to take people directly to the Croatian border.
Mohamed Afar, 23, who said he had left Damascus, Syria, after his shop there was bombed, said he and 13 relatives had raced to get into Hungary, but had failed to make it before the border was closed. Now, he said, they were sheltering in an abandoned building once used by Serbian customs officials. “Our friends told us not to go to Hungary, because they would put you in prison for three years if you tried to cross the border,” said Daban Sabir, 25, a student from Suleymani, Iraq, who was one of the first migrants to test the new route into the European Union through Croatia and Slovenia.
“I’m hoping the border will open,” he said, adding that he was looking to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to resolve the crisis. “I will wait. Maybe Ms. Merkel comes to open it? The Hungarian government seems to have no mind or heart. Can’t they see all these families? There is nothing for us here. It smells and it’s dirty.” Clutching a document from the Serbian authorities that he had been told was essential to enter Croatia, Mr. Sabir and the others moved down the road toward a line of Croatian police vans sitting between radish and corn fields.
Mr. Afar said that he was desperate to take his two young children to Germany or to the Netherlands, but that he was quickly running out of money. “I believe this is a trend which will increase in coming days,” said Terence Pike, who works with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Croatia.
Hungary had moved swiftly to show that it would enforce its new laws. On Wednesday the government announced that police officers had detained 519 people for illegal entry or damaging a border fence since the new rules came into force a day earlier. The authorities have opened 46 criminal cases so far, and the first suspects were to appear in court Wednesday afternoon, according to Gyorgy Bakondi, an aide to Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Prosecutors in Szeged, Hungary, said that nine adults — seven from Iraq, two from Syria — would be deported for illegally crossing, after expedited court proceedings.
Hungary’s actions had spillover effects throughout the region. Buses that had been carrying migrants to Serbia’s border with Hungary from its border with Macedonia were instead diverted to Croatia, Serbian news media reported.
Croatia’s prime minister, Zoran Milanovic, said on Wednesday that migrants would be allowed to pass through the country, which is a member of the European Union but borders several countries that are not.
“No one will block them,” he said. “No fences.”
But Mr. Milanovic, who faces a tight race in elections scheduled for mid-November, also made it clear that his country was a temporary stop, not a final destination, for the migrants.
The countries of the former Yugoslavia, which were torn apart by the Balkan wars, have thus far taken a tolerant and welcoming stance toward the migrants, who have viewed the region as a transit zone rather than a final destination. But with Hungary’s decision to criminalize the breaching of its borders, countries like Serbia and Croatia, which are relatively homogeneous and poor compared with some of their richer European neighbors, could soon confront a stream of migrants for which they are ill prepared.
In Croatia, the Right Party leader, Anto Dapic, told the local news media that he supported offering “temporary aid to women and children, but not young men who look like they just left the gym.”
Mr. Dapic has aligned himself with countries in Eastern and Central Europe, like Hungary, which have argued that immigration is a matter of national sovereignty, and that the European Union has no right to tell countries how many refugees they should take in.
The Croatian interior minister, Ranko Ostojic, said his country “respected the fundamental values of the E.U.,” which it joined in 2013, and had embraced a plan that would distribute migrants across the union’s member states according to their population and wealth.
Asked whether the Schengen Agreement — which has permitted unrestricted travel across much of the Continent — was under attack, Mr. Ostojic said in a televised interview: “If each country has an individual approach to this work, and if this continues, of course, then the founding values for which the E.U. exists, which is freedom of movement of people, is at risk. That is why responsible leaders at this time are really looking for a solution to this situation.”
Nearly 600 migrants crossed the border from Serbia into the small Croatian town of Tovarnik by Wednesday evening, hopping out of police vans and then navigating through a processing center before boarding buses heading toward a reception center in the capital, Zagreb.
Croatian border patrol officers caught a number of migrants trying to bypass registration by going through neighboring cornfields, and, as of 11 a.m., had detained 181 of them.
In Austria, army border controls officially took effect at the start of Wednesday, drastically slowing the flood of migrants who were already in Hungary. The controls were focused on three border crossings: Nickelsdorf, Deutschkreutz and Schachendorf.
Elsewhere in Austria, which followed Germany’s decision over the weekend to impose stringent border checks, there was a bottleneck of migrants seeking to enter Germany. At the Westbahnhof in Vienna on Wednesday morning, an estimated 5,000 migrants spent the night; a few were sleeping on mats outdoors.
In Salzburg, where 1,200 migrants had spent the night in emergency shelters, Michael Rausch, a police spokesman, said the situation was tense.
As of Wednesday morning, there were 2,000 migrants at Salzburg’s main station, according to the Austrian broadcaster ORF. The police said that some 5,000 migrants had slept in Vienna overnight, many of them stranded because of bottlenecks along the German-Austrian border.
At a migrant center in Deggendorf, Germany, Ayham Mahdor, 19, a computer engineering student from Syria, waited while his uncle received medical care. There was a room for each family, and a shower for every four rooms — unlike the “awful” conditions in Hungary, he said. He said he had left Syria to escape military conscription, and hoped to enroll in school in Frankfurt.
In a rare bit of good news, Osama Abdul Mohsen, the Syrian migrant who was tripped by a Hungarian camerawoman while carrying his child, will live in Madrid, after a Spanish soccer academy offered to help him settle there, The Associated Press reported. Video footage of the trip became a potent symbol last week of the abuse of refugees. The academy said that it wanted to find Mr. Mohsen, who was a coach in Syria, a job in soccer but that he first needed to learn Spanish.