In a nutshell, without a word of exaggeration: the law amendment changes an already ill-functioning national asylum system into a physically isolated, fenced off container camp area at the Southern border, and allows for the authorities to keep the rest of the country ‘clean’ of people seeking protection. The camp area will be a center for processing and managing its people regardless of who they are, where are they coming from, how old they are or what they need. The same in facts: the amendment legalizes detention for all asylum seekers, including children in families and unaccompanied minors over 14. The law will also allow for a ‘collection’ of asylum seekers from all around the country (more on that below). The timeframe for appealing a negative asylum decision is now shortened, from the already extremely short deadlines, to three calendar days, and asylum applications can now be rejected also based on “not cooperating” with the authorities, in which case the case will be closed and the person will be pushed to Serbia with no way to appeal the decision. In case of a negative decision, the asylum seeker should also pay for their own detention, such as accommodation and food, to the Hungarian state. The new amendment also makes it possible to apply for asylum only through the transit zones which is extremely problematic considering the fact that only five people per working day are allowed to access a transit zone from Serbia and waiting times are around one year at the moment.
The Hungarian government has passed an amendment in the national legislation on March 7th 2017. The content is a blatant attack on people who are seeking international protection. Several legal rights professionals have done a great job reacting to the content of the legislation, and explaining why it is in such striking contradiction with existing laws (the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, UNHCR, UNICEF, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch), so Migszol will in turn try to open up these obscure legal changes to reveal what it does to people on a very practical level. In a nutshell, without a word of exaggeration: the law amendment changes an already ill-functioning national asylum system into a physically isolated, fenced off container camp area at the Southern border, and allows for the authorities to keep the rest of the country ‘clean’ of people seeking protection. The camp area will be a center for processing and managing its people regardless of who they are, where are they coming from, how old they are or what they need. The same in facts: the amendment legalizes detention for all asylum seekers, including children in families and unaccompanied minors over 14. The law will also allow for a ‘collection’ of asylum seekers from all around the country (more on that below). The timeframe for appealing a negative asylum decision is now shortened, from the already extremely short deadlines, to three calendar days, and asylum applications can now be rejected also based on “not cooperating” with the authorities, in which case the case will be closed and the person will be pushed to Serbia with no way to appeal the decision. In case of a negative decision, the asylum seeker should also pay for their own detention, such as accommodation and food, to the Hungarian state. The new amendment also makes it possible to apply for asylum only through the transit zones which is extremely problematic considering the fact that only five people per working day are allowed to access a transit zone from Serbia and waiting times are around one year at the moment.
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On Thursday’s press conference, the Minister of the Prime Minister’s office János Lázár underlined Hungary needs to urgently “reintroduce detention to migrants”. Unfortunately János mixed facts quite severely in his statement, so we felt we have to help him out a bit. We are not surprised, of course, that the Hungarian government does not know its own asylum legislation, given the speed with which many aspects of it were changed in 2016, and given their total ignorance of international legislation. The core of the detention legislation, however, dates back to 2013, so János should know better. Therefore we wrote him the open letter below.
*** Dear János, You stated that the Hungarian government has to reintroduce the detention of migrants to guarantee security. It is quite clear for us that your statement is a populist reach for voters among the far right, because Hungary has had a detention system in place for the last three years. Consequently, there’s no need to reintroduce it. What you suggested as a new policy is not “detention of migrants” but jailing everybody who applies for asylum. That’s very problematic for many reasons, but as you seem not to be totally aware of the system as it is now, we will begin today by sharing with you some basic facts about detention and reception in Hungary. What is detention in Hungary? When last visiting the camp in Bicske, we found it remarkable that there were no blue propaganda posters in the city, and we are only left to wonder why that was the case. Maybe because people in Bicske have lived with the refugee camp for two decades, and better than anybody in the country they know that the government propaganda is divisive, hateful and useless?
Talking with children is always astounding - there was a bit of a lost in translation moment when we met and discovered that this group of four small boys could talk in Farsi, Turkish, and German. It is crazy to imagine there is a whole generation of such multilingual children. We spoke with ca. 10 men staying in the camp. Many of them described how they had come to the camp in the recent weeks after being released from the prisons in Kiskunhalas and Bekescsaba. They all said that the camp is a good place, now - they all have their own rooms, the food is good, and they get weekly allowance money. They said they can sleep in peace in the camp. Given this positive feedback (and we would like to extend our gratitude to the person managing the camp), we are only left to wonder, why does the government so vehemently try to close the camp? Indeed, we spoke also about the closure of the camp, since many people had heard rumours of it. The news of the planned closure of Bicske understandably created a feeling of fear and insecurity - what will happen to the people staying in the camp, we were asked. This report is based on the talk and discussion on an event on of the Röszke trials in Hungary, on refugees accused of violating the border fence during a riot/mass disturbance - which was held in Auróra, Budapest 24th 2016. As our guest, we had Tamas Fazekas, who works for the refugee program at the Hungarian Helsinki Committee. Fazekas is a criminal lawyer, the defendant of three of the accused, and works for the HHC since 2001. The views expressed in the event and in this blogpost are his own and not representative of the HHC. HHC has unique access to all refugee camps and detention centers in Hungary. They are independent from the Hungarian government and do not receive any project money the EU, and provide free legal aid for people seeking international protection in Hungary.
The Hungarian Helsinki Committee has published new info leaflets for asylum seekers in Hungary (available in 10 languages here). Quick overview of recent events A new amendment of the law allows the police to ‘escort’ all refugees that are caught within 8km of the fence to the ‘no man’s land’ at the other side of the fence where they have to wait for days and weeks in inhumane conditions and almost no legal counselling. A new transit zone is opened in Àsotthalom. The conditions in the detention centers remain very bad, especially from Kiskunhalas immigration detention people report dirty facilities, lack of food and to be denied contact with their families. In the meantime there are trials against refugees who are accused of ‘vandalism’ going on (see the Migszol event on coming Friday, June 24th, regarding the political trials of riots in Roszke in Autumn 2015, in here.) In between June 10 and June 20th there have been 1362 people who were caught crossing the border illegally to Hungary New law to legalize push backs of refugees
In early June, after the law that abolished the integration contract, there has been new small but very severe and significant change in the Hungarian asylum law. The new amendment to the asylum act, that is to be signed by the President, outlines that whoever enters irregularly to Hungary and will be caught within 8 kilometers of either the Croatian or Serbian border will be “escorted back to the transit zones” by the police. As the Helsinki Committee declares, the people waiting in the pre-transit area are queueing for days and weeks, without being provided with tents, access to toilet or even water. Bakondi György, the chief security advisor to the Prime Minister, declared that the most recent legal change in the asylum system will strengthen the measures in place, such as the barbed wire fence. In this limbo area, there is very high uncertainty about the fate of people who cannot return to Serbia but cannot move on to any other destination. According to the governmental chief security advisor, this measure will ease the pressure put on the existing camps and will stop “illegal immigrants” from staying in Hungary. We argue that the “pressure” accused by Bakondi has different causes – in the last months, a number of open camps have been closed (Debrecen, with the biggest capacity, being the most infamous case) and the basic services and reception conditions in some of the remaining camps are severely limited. The difficulties in accommodating people in open facilities is government-made and it is caused by its refusal to provide basic services to those few allowed inside such facilities. The political and legal limbo situation of people at the border is made even more serious by the ambiguous relation between Hungary and Serbia. Serbia recently asked an explanation from Hungary regarding the new modification in law ordering the deportation of refugees back to Serbia via the transit zone which in reality belongs to Hungary. Serbian government declared that they will not take anybody back. In the meantime, the people “escorted” by the police back to the border know very little about the legal provisions that the government adopted to keep people out of Hungary and limit the number of applications for legal recognition. There is not legal aid provided by the government, and the only independent source of legal assistance in transit zones, the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, has limited access and capacity to deal with each case. For instance, in the process of application in transit zones the right to appeal an order of expulsion must be exercised within a few days. While only a few dozen people are allowed to make an application everyday, many more are waiting in makeshift camps without extremely limited access to basic services of food, water, medicine. There are no sanitary facilities nor shelter for people to sleep or protect from the weather etc, while Hungary allows only 30 people per day through the transit zones. For a summary of the last legal changes that further destroy access to protection for refugees and asylum seekers in Hungary we recommend you to look at this recent update from the Hungarian Helsinki Committee. People imprisoned in the closed refugee detention center of Kiskunhalas organized a protest yesterday, June 1st 2016. Today, the protest continues. They are demanding freedom to leave the prison and live in an open camp, a faster asylum procedure and better living conditions in the camp. According to Julia Ivan, a lawyer at the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, many of the protesters are people that Hungary is trying to deport to Greece with the Dublin regulation, despite the fact that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled against such deportations.
Kiskunhalas is one of the asylum detention centers, where asylum seekers are kept imprisoned up to six months, without ever having committed a crime. The conditions of these camps are even worse than in the ‘open camps’ - with widespread abuse by guards and insufficient or no access to legal aid, healthcare, food, social workers, or translation (see our anti-detention campaign for more info). People are cut off from the outside, with ca 10 minutes of internet access per day and no mobile phones allowed. There is limited quality legal aid, but the many people report to us that they are simply not told where and when they may see a lawyer about their case. The Cordelia Foundation is present once or twice a month to offer psychological support. With our first and second situation update, we have started a series of documentation in which we report every other week about the asylum situation in Hungary. The information either comes from us, or then we collect information from people working in the ground about camps, detention centers, transit zones and the border areas and make relevant up to date information available in English.
Overview on the Balkan route and numbers This week a lot of changes have taken place along the Balkan route. While the EU-Turkey deal got blocked by Greece as Greek courts decided Turkey is not a safe country for refugees, and the evacuation of thousands of people in Eidomeni by Greek authorities has started, Bulgaria is planning to build more fence on its border with Greece and Turkey to limit the entry of asylum seekers. The number of people continuing to arrive in Serbia - where supporting infrastructure is urgently needed - and travelling on to Hungary is growing. According to the Hungarian border police 776 people were registered to enter into Hungary under the fence, and were apprehended between May 18th and 23th. UNHCR estimates the number of people entering Hungary from 18th to 22nd at around 772 people in total. For Austria, up to date information on the numbers is unfortunately not available. In comparison to the last weeks this means that the numbers are rising. As mentioned in our first situation update, one of the ways we at MigSzol can influence the current situation is through documentation. Many people are still passing through Hungary every day, and recently the importance of Hungary as a transit country has been increasing again: there are many things happening at both the Serbian and the Austrian borders and the situation is changing quickly. Even though most of the camps are full (and often overcrowded), there is very little information about the conditions there available.
Most importantly, see here for the information leaflet prepared by the Hungarian Helsinki committee. It is available in ten languages, and we would like to stress that the HHC is the number one source for updates on the legal situation of people on the move. We also recommend you to follow the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (@hhc_helsinki) and Migszol Csoport (@migszolcsop) on Twitter. We also recommend the new report on the general situation of Hungary as a country of asylum, published by UNHCR in May 2016. Overview and numbers While there are record number of people crossing into Europe again via the Mediterranean, we would like to note that the Balkan route has practically not been closed. The number of people coming through the route is much less than in 2015, but there is a still a very severe situation. Serbia is the nodal point for people on the Balkan route, and as the border between Croatia and Serbia remains closed for people seeking protection, the only possibility they have is to enter to Hungary. Because the number of people who are allowed to seek asylum in the official transit zone is very limited, many people continue crossing the border fence. Subsequently, people are either transported to open camps in Hungary, to asylum or immigration detention centers (depending on whether they ask for asylum or not). Those people who manage to apply for asylum in the transit zone either have an inadmissibility decision based on the fact that Serbia is a safe third country and are expelled from Hungary, or then they are considered vulnerable and transferred to open camps or detention centers in Hungary. We have testimonies for cases in which people have been beaten up, robbed and pushed back at Hungarian-Serbian border. For details of what happens in the border, we recommend the aforementioned UNHCR report. Open camps in Hungary are severely overcrowded. In the camps and detention centers the conditions remain very bad. People report that they are overcrowded and that the access to legal support is extremely limited, if not non existent. In some cases, people we speak to are reporting that they are not told of access to lawyers even though there are lawyers present. Also the general and legal situation in Hungary worsens even more: a bill has been passed that tightens the material conditions of refugees extremely as outlined by Migszol earlier, the referendum about the acceptance of the EU quota system will take place in early autumn, the right-wing propaganda continues and disproportionate/illegal punishments and trials for refugees accused of starting a riot in Roszke in 2015 are still happening. There are ca. 290 people on a daily basis at the transit zones., while 491 people were registered to enter illegally into Hungary and were apprehended in Hungary in between May 6th and 12th according to the border police.1330 people arrived in Austria in between May 6th and 12th according to UNHCR, and in the meanwhile Austria is planning an extremely tight asylum legislation that will most likely have severe effects on Hungary as well. On Monday 7th March 2016 the Interior Ministry proposed amendments to the migration- and asylum law in Hungary. The legislation is available in Hungarian here; unfortunately no official English translation has been issued yet.
The amendments address various migration-related questions. This not only covers asylum legislation, but also residence permits and 3rd country nationals who come to Hungary to work for companies identified by the Hungarian government as “strategic economic partners” such as IBM, Tata, GE and Huawei. This move suggests that the Fidesz government does not actually have a problem with migrants, but rather only with a specific type of migrants: those who are fleeing persecution, conflicts and poverty fuelled by European policies. With these changes, the Hungarian government legalizes the discrimination of vulnerable groups and the favouritism of the rich groups institutionalizing inequalities within the population. The changes related to asylum legislation are the most severe section of the draft amendments. They will affect those people who get their status after 1st April 2016. In turn, this means that the amended rules should not be applied to those people who already are refugees in Hungary. While we are against the amendments in their totality, we would like to point out that they further manifest a distinction that puts refugees in two classes: those have arrived before April 2016 and are eligible for integration support and will receive their statuses for a long time, whereas those that arrive after April 2016, who won’t. Also, the draft legislation is extremely vague on the question on exactly which sections of it will be applied retroactively and which ones will not. Regarding people seeking protection, the most important changes in the legislation are the following: Detention
The position of Migszol is that detention is one of the most severe issues in Hungary at the moment. Testimonies from people who have been detained point to not only abysmal material and hygienic conditions, but also psychologically degrading treatment. For example, people who have stayed in detention for many months reported the lack of appropriate clothing, inadequate washing and sleeping facilities, or the prohibition of writing with pen and paper. It is also very serious that the people in detention can only use the internet for 10-15 minutes per day. This way, it becomes very difficult to stay in contact with one’s family, or to talk to anyone who is outside the prison and could help. Finally, Migszol strongly opposes the fact that vulnerable people including children in families can be detained at all: we find it morally condemnable in a country that is campaigning for family life, and notes that this practice is also in contradiction with EU regulation. Refugee status
Based on years of work with migrants and refugees in Hungary, at Migszol we stress that the “depth of integration” has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not a person is in danger in her home country, and according to common sense and international and European law, it is the latter that is primary reason for ensuring their right to international protection. Instead, talking about the “depth of integration” seeks to shift the focus and fabricate “reasons” not to provide support to people fleeing existential hardships. This is even more troubling as the respective amendments also totally abolish any integration system and support for refugees. We also think it is highly problematic to potentially deny people the right to a travel document, especially for a reason as vague as “threat to public order”. The amendments do not specify what public order stands for, and we are afraid that this can be used as a reason to hold back both travel documents as well as the necessary reasons for such a decision. According to international law, people recognized as refugees have the right to travel document. Thus, not giving them a travel document means that they will not be entitled to exercise their right of free movement within the Schengen zone. Instead, they will be trapped in Hungary where a common fate that awaits them is homelessness (also criminalized in the constitution) and forced public labor for an income beyond the minimum wage. Migszol also states that the humanitarian status should not be used anymore in Hungary, as in essence it is very similar to the 5-year status. The difference of the humanitarian status is, among others, that it gives people much less rights to work. Abolishment of all integration support
The abolition of all integration support is one of the most serious parts of the new amendments. The responsible Ministry argues that these measures are abolished so that refugees will not get any more support than Hungarians, and that they will use all the same services. This is a populist move by the government to claim that refugees are not given any more support than other Hungarians. There are however several problems with the total elimination of integration support: When saying that refugees have the same options as Hungarians, the government is suggesting that there would be a functioning system already. In fact, according to a recent research by Tarki, 47% of Hungarians live in poverty. Moreover, the government has not done anything to solve the very serious housing crisis in Hungary (you may find more information on Hungary’s housing crisis in here, and e.g. about the criminalization of homelessness in the Hungarian constitution in here). In addition, the low unemployment-percentage is because of the mandatory public labor-scheme, in which people doing a physically demanding full-time job for less than the minimum salary. In principle, Migszol has nothing against the fact that refugees have the same system as Hungarians, if only refugees would have intensive, quality Hungarian language education in addition (which they did not have under the previous system either: free Hungarian classes for refugees were terminated in 2013). The main issue is that there is no functioning system for Hungarians either. In addition to not speaking Hungarian, refugees, just like any newcomers in any society, lack the social networks, and the familiarity and ability to navigate in the society’s bureaucratic system. Integration measures are crucial in order to ensure equality with Hungarians who have those skills, and abolishing those measures only means strengthening inequality. Abolishing the right to work in the camps and the small but important cash allowances for refugees are equally serious measures, and sends a message from the beginning that refugees are not welcome in this country even if they work. Most refugees use the cash allowance for groceries as the food provided in the camp is very poor (just as it is in Hungarian hospitals and schools), for public transport tickets, or to buy coffee or cigarettes. Moreover, refugees will be banished to stay in the camp area as they will not have money for public transport anymore. This, however, is illegal in regards to the EU Reception conditions directive which states that “access to employment for an asylum seeker must now be granted within a maximum period of 9 months.” Likely effects of the amendments Given that the new draft law will effectively fill up detention centers and drive refugees to homelessness and destitution, it is more likely to result in more and more people to avoid Hungary. The overall goal of Migszol is to work towards a Hungary that would be a welcoming place for refugees and migrants: Yet, at this point we have no other option than to call upon all member states of European Union not only to vocally condemn this latest move in the Hungarian government’s war against refugees, but also to immediately stop all Dublin deportations to Hungary. In the same time, we are very aware that the campaign against refugees that the Fidesz government is waging is a tool to advance Viktor Orban’s xenophobic agenda in the whole continent. His policies neatly fit in the latest European deals with Turkey that completely disregard international law and human rights. Domestically, it is used to divert attention from burning issues such as a crisis in education, housing and healthcare. It becomes clear not only that the recent events in and outside of Hungary are related, but also that the need to mobilize against the inhumane border-regime is getting increasingly urgent. In the last weeks and months less and less Dublin transfers to Hungary have taken place. The reasons why those transfers have been partially stopped are explained in detail in a report by the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE). We want to give an overview here, because they show a lot about how bad conditions are for refugees in Hungary.
What is the Dublin regulation? - a short introduction The Dublin regulation is an EU-law that has great influence on the lives of refugees in Europe. According to the Dublin regulation, a person can only apply for refugee status in one member state, and Dublin aims to set criterias on how to determine the responsible state. Usually, the country through which a person first enters the EU (or rather where she or he is first registered) has to handle the asylum claim. In practice this normally means that any following country where asylum is claimed will return the person to the appropriate state. Hungary is one of the states for which those transfers apply a lot, mostly because of its location at the external border of the Schengen area. There are however some reasons why Dublin transfers can be suspended. Those reasons can be for example close family members in another Schengen country, but they can also refer to the conditions in the country where the person first entered Schengen. At the moment most of the Dublin transfers to Hungary do not take place. A great new report from ECRE analyzes those cases in which EU-States do not transfer asylum seekers back to Hungary. In most of the cases the reason for which the transfer has been prevented was the August and September changes (a good overview over the policy changes is in this report by the Heinrich Böll Stiftung) in the Hungarian Asylum law and the violations of international or European law (specifically The European Convention on Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU) that follow from that. The specific argumentations differ in various countries of the EU, but are mostly centered around three issues: access to protection, detention and reception. Access to protection The first big problem that is internationally criticized is the limited access to asylum and to the asylum procedures, that resulted from the legal changes in late summer 2015. Those legal changes enabled the Hungarian government to build the fence on the border with Serbia and to make it illegal to enter irregularly or to damage the fence. With this Hungary has made the access to international protection (asylum) so difficult that it does not fulfil human rights standards any more. Another problematic element of the Hungarian asylum law and practices was the establishment of the transit zones at the border, which are supposed to be a no-man’s land, which is legally not possible. A new procedure of admission was introduced at the transit zones. It includes a very short time table for the review of the asylum case which puts into question if the decisions, made in such a short time, can be at all of of high quality. Moreover, the Hungarian government declared Serbia (and other countries) - against the suggestions of United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) - a “safe country”, which means that asylum seekers who came through Serbia can be sent back with the argument that they already came through a “safe country” and could have applied for asylum there. As it is against International law to send people back into countries where they face serious human rights violations (such as in Serbia for which Amnesty International’s report described the bad conditions in detail last year), Hungary is strongly criticized for these legal changes. The establishment of the transit zones at the border of Serbia and Hungary and the declaration of Serbia as a safe country have led to a situation in which over 99% of asylum applications have been rejected without any further consideration. Additionally, and most severely, being found inadmissible for applying for asylum means that the person also receives a 1-2 years ban on entry and stay in Hungary. Although the “safe country list” entered into force only on the 1st of August 2015, it has retroactive application and thus can apply to people returning to Hungary under Dublin regulation, which means that Dublin returnees would be more than likely to not have any access to the asylum procedure in Hungary. This is because, once the returnees are sent back to Hungary, the new regulations often make them reapply for asylum so their case is seen as a new one and not as a continuation. That means they have to present new evidence to ask for asylum which they often don’t have. Moreover, they are also subjected to the shortened timeframe. Hungary’s new regulations consequently mean a quasi-denial of access to the asylum procedure. It is criticized internationally that once asylum seekers are sent back to Hungary they face a risk of a chain deportation: due to the inadequate asylum system in Serbia the applicants risk being sent to Macedonia and from there to Greece which has very poor conditions for refugees (as this recent UNHCR note shows clearly) and an insufficient asylum system. |
AuthorThis blog is ran by members of Migszol, it features our analyses and reflections on asylum questions in Hungary in more depth. If you would like to write a guest piece, drop us a line! Archives
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