Migrant crisis: Seven dead after boat sinks near Libya
Hungary’s steel fence fails to deter migrants as EU ministers call for urgent meeting
Migrants jump through the border fence from Serbia into Hungary.
Critics see the fence as a costly publicity stunt. Photograph: Matt
Cardy/Getty Images
Seven people died when a boat carrying
migrants sank off Libya’s coast on Sunday, the second such fatal
accident at sea within days, while European leaders struggled to find a
coherent policy on the refugee crisis.
The Italian coastguard said that some 1,600 migrants
had been rescued in the Mediterranean and brought to Italy over the
weekend, showing the influx of people, mostly from Africa and the Middle
East, remained strong.
At least 2,500 migrants have died making the journey since January, most of them drowning in the Mediterranean.
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“We had reports this morning that there are seven
bodies of illegal migrants that sank off Khoms . . . but we don’t have
any details of how many migrants were on board,“ said Mohamad
al-Misrati, a spokesman for the Red Crescent in Tripoli.
On Thursday, another vessel sank off the coast of the Libyan town of Zuwara, killing up to 200 people.
In Italy, which has been at the forefront of the
crisis, prime minister Matteo Renzi said the rising death toll would
push EU states to confront the problem.
Hungary fence Migrants are continuing to cross at will into Hungary despite the completion of a razor wire fence along its border with Serbia and safety fears that soared following the death of 71 people trapped inside a truck, apparently driven by traffickers.
Hungary’s army finished laying razor wire along the
175km frontier on Saturday, hours after three Bulgarian men and an
Afghan pleaded not guilty to charges of people smuggling in connection
with the truck deaths.
Hungarian police arrested a fourth Bulgarian on
Sunday, as experts tried to establish the identities of the 59 men,
eight women and four children found on Thursday in a truck parked on a
motorway in Austria, close to its border with Hungary.
Over the weekend, three severely dehydrated children
were rescued from a truck of migrants being driven through Austria by a
Romanian man.
The children have since been taken from hospital by their parents to continue the journey to Germany.
Hungarian police also stopped several vehicles
suspected of involvement in people smuggling and detained drivers from
Hungary, Romania, Austria, Serbia, Lithuania and Poland.
People traffickers in the region are making huge
profits from hundreds of thousands of people now seeking refuge in the
EU from war, persecution and unremitting poverty in parts of the Middle
East, Africa and south Asia.
Balkan route
Migrants, and volunteers who give them basic aid, said on Sunday that the fence and safety fears had no effect on numbers now following the “Balkan route” to western Europe – through Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia and Hungary.
“No problem, no problem,” said Ruben, a Bangladeshi,
at Budapest’s Nyugati train station, when asked how he had crossed the
fence into Hungary.
“Now we go on. We don’t know how, but we will do it.”
Many migrants in Hungary pay people smugglers because
they are afraid to catch international buses and trains, fearing they
will be removed and registered by police and sent back to the EU state
in which they first arrived.
Critics demand the annulment of this rule, part of
the so-called Dublin regulation; they also want migrants to be allowed
to use public transport, and they see Hungarian premier Victor Orban’s
border fence as a costly publicity stunt.
“It’s ridiculous,” said Mark Kekesi, a psychology
professor who works with the Migrant Solidarity group in Szeged, 15km
from the Serbian border.
“Anyone can crawl under or over the fence in a couple
of minutes. It is very expensive and will never stop anything. But this
is a political statement - Orban wants to project the idea that he is
protecting Hungary and Europe from ‘invaders’.”
On several days last week, between 2,000 and 3,500
migrants entered Hungary despite the fence being nearly complete -
ramping up pressure on border and police forces, and on Mr Orban from
vocal far-right groups that demand tougher action.
“Migrant numbers are not dropping at all and it’s
making Orban look ridiculous,” said Mr Kekesi, at Migrant Solidarity’s
help point in Szeged.
An additional steel border fence is now being
erected, and more than 2,100 police officers and cadets will form
fast-reaction “hunting” units, equipped with four-wheel-drives,
helicopters and dogs, to respond to incidents.
Hungary’s parliament is expected to debate the deployment of soldiers to the border.
Common values
French foreign minister Laurent Fabius said on Sunday that eastern European states in particular were showing a “scandalous” attitude towards asylum-seekers.
“They are extremely harsh. Hungary is part of Europe,
which has values and we do not respect those values by putting up
fences,” he said.
“Hungary is not respecting Europe’s common values so
the European authorities need to have a serious discussion, even a stern
discussion with its officials.”
Britain’s home secretary, Theresa May,
meanwhile, said the failings of a “broken European migration system”
were exacerbated by passport-free travel through much of the bloc - a
system that does not include Britain and Ireland.
Germany, France and Britain yesterday made a joint
call for an urgent meeting of EU interior and justice ministers in the
next two weeks to take “immediate action” and agree on “concrete steps”.
In Szeged, Mr Kekesi said police numbers had already
“dramatically increased” in the border region, but showed no sign of
deterring the migrants.
“I met a Syrian engineer last week, about
60-years-old, well-educated, and he told me: ‘At home I would be dead
already, so I have nothing to lose’,” Mr Kekesi recalled.
“No fence will stop people who feel that way.”
Additional reporting: Reuters and Guardian
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