The Hungarian government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban has just crossed a frightening line. It has decreed that all migrants will be held in camps made out of shipping containers at points along its southern borders. This order applies not only to newly-arrived refugees. Migrants already seeking shelter in Hungary will be rounded up and put in these container camps. This includes children.
The move by the hardline Orban has brought protests from the UN Human Rights Agency and NGOs such as Amnesty International. And it is not just the container camps that are so horrific, but also the treatment that is being prepared for the detainees. Those who have had their request for asylum rejected will have their appeals fast-tracked. It is likely that while they wait for the final decision on their case, they will be required to pay for their squalid accommodation. It remains to be seen how and where failed appellants will then be deported. It seems unlikely that Hungary’s southern neighbors, Romania, Serbia and Croatia will allow these luckless people to be pushed back over their frontiers. If Orban’s government wants to fly them out, to where could they be sent? There is a clear risk that Syrians in particular would be returned to an extremely uncertain fate back home.
The likelihood is that these container camps will, therefore, become a permanent and degrading spectacle that shames Hungary and by extension the EU of which the country is a part. But then there can be little doubt that Orban intends these camps to be as awful as possible. He wants to send a message that Hungary is not open for humanitarian gestures. He wants to discourage any further migrants fleeing for their lives to even think of trying to travel via Hungarian territory. Orban cites the fear of terrorism and says that Hungary is “under siege” by migrants. But the reality is that this deeply objectionable politician is an Islamophobe. He has recently paraded his race hate in public, claiming that Muslim values are not compatible with a Christian society. This has caused offense among many Christians who protest that Orban’s heartless policies are in no way compatible with the tenets of Christianity.
Last October in a flawed referendum, Hungarians voted to reject an EU plan that would require them accept just 1,294 refugees. Less than half the electorate bothered to vote, which rendered the result void. In 2016, the country accepted 425 asylum applications whereas Germany under the decent and far-sighted Chancellor Angela Merkel took more than 280,000.
The problem, however, is not a matter of numbers. It is that the objectionable Orban is setting a trend that is liable to be followed by Islamophobes elsewhere in the EU. Germany’s Alternatif fur Deutschland, Holland’s hate-filled Geert Wilders and France’s sugar-tongued Marine Le Pen all harbor racist agendas. If Orban gets away with confining migrants in shipping containers and treating them like unwanted cargo, like contraband, then these other bigots will be emboldened to follow suit on a far larger and even more disgusting scale.
Europeans are at a moral crossroads. They turned away when the Nazis opened their concentration camps and as a result millions died. Though everyone vowed it would never happen again, it did in Bosnia where Serb ethnic cleansing resulted in the enormity of Srebrenica. Hungary cannot be allowed to get away with this.
