“Double rows of razor-wire fences. High-tech watch towers equipped with search lights, motion sensors, cameras and loudspeakers. Hungary’s border with Serbia, specially fortified in the last two years to keep out migrants and refugees, is anything but a welcome mat.
Now, add to those deterrents detention camps — small container villages surrounded by razor wire, with a tiny playground for children.
Hungary, which already had one of the toughest immigration policies in the European Union, last month rolled out a draconian new asylum procedure that will reduce applicants to a trickle — 10 people a day — and essentially put them in prison camps for months while their cases are decided. Even after that, if the recent past holds true, more than 90 percent are likely to be rejected.
By May, several hundred asylum seekers already in Hungary may also be relocated to the detention camps, evoking ugly and unavoidable echoes of rounding up Jews, Roma and others during World War II.”
The pictures illustrate well the present model of refugee camps in Europe, which one can find in Italy and in Greek hotspots, as well as now in Hungary. The automatic detention of all asylum seekers remain in violation of international and European human rights instruments.
