BRUSSELS — Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Hungary of mistreating refugees and migrants on purpose to deter them from seeking to cross into the European Union from Serbia, days before the country holds a referendum on EU migrant quotas.
The Hungarian government had no immediate comment on the report in which the human rights organization accused Prime Minister Viktor Orban of replacing “the rule of law with the rule of fear.”
Critics say Hungary has been heavy-handed in answer to the migrant crisis that saw about 1.3 million people reaching the European Union last year.
Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said Hungary should be expelled from the bloc for breaching European values, including erecting a razor-wire fence along its border with Serbia.
Amnesty’s director for Europe, John Dalhuisen, said of Orban: “His attempts to deliberately prevent refugees and migrants from reaching Hungary have been accompanied by an ever more disturbing pattern of attacks on them and the international safeguards designed to protect them.
“Appalling treatment and labyrinthine asylum procedures are a cynical ploy to deter asylum-seekers from Hungary’s ever more militarized borders.”
EU states are bitterly divided over how to share out the burden of caring for those who have made it into the bloc and have increasingly focused on sealing their external borders to prevent any repeat of an uncontrolled mass influx.
Some have praised Budapest for sharply reducing the number of irregular border crossings after hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants moved up from the Balkans towards northern Europe last year. — Reuters
