Hungary scrambles to confront record migrant influx

Hungary made plans on Wednesday to reinforce its southern border with helicopters, mounted police and dogs, and was also considering using the army as record numbers of migrants, many of them Syrian refugees, passed through coils of razor-wire into Europe.

Over 2,500 mainly Syrians, Afghans and Pakistanis crossed from Serbia into the European Union on Tuesday, over, under or around a razor-wire barrier into the hands of an over-stretched police force that struggled to fingerprint and process them.

Unrest flared briefly at a crowded reception center in the border region of Roszke, with tear gas fired.

Another 1,300 were detained by 9.30 a.m. (0730 GMT) on Wednesday.

More will have passed unnoticed, walking through gaps in a border fence being built by Hungary into a Europe groping for answers to its worst refugee crisis since World War Two.

In Germany, which expects to receive 800,000 asylum-seekers this year, Chancellor Angela Merkel was due in the eastern town of Heidenau, near Dresden, the scene of violent clashes over the weekend involving far-right militants protesting against the arrival of around 250 refugees, underscoring the social tensions unleashed by the influx.

With frequent attacks on refugee shelters and warnings of rising xenophobia, Merkel's cabinet agreed to double the funding this year to help towns cope with the record number of arrivals.

Hungary, which is part of Europe’s Schengen passport-free travel zone, is building a 3.5-metre high fence along its 175-km (110-mile) border with Serbia in a bid to keep them out, taking a hard line on what right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban says is a threat to European security, prosperity and identity.

Government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said parliament would debate next week whether to employ the army in the border effort.

“Hungary's government and national security cabinet ... has discussed the question of how the army could be used to help protect Hungary's border and the EU's border,” Kovacs said.

Authorities said over 140,000 migrants had entered Hungary from Serbia to far this year. The numbers traveling through the Balkans have soared in recent weeks, with 3,000 crossing into Macedonia daily from Greece then whisked by train and bus north to Serbia and beyond.

The chief commissioner of Hungarian police, Karoly Papp, said police were readying six special border patrol units of an initial 2,106 officers, equipped with helicopters, horses and dogs, to be sent in depending on the situation on the Serbian border.

“They don’t have and will not get an order to shoot,” Papp told a news conference.

In Roszke, the police spokesman said some 200 migrants at the reception center where unrest flared had refused to be fingerprinted.

Almost all hope to reach the more affluent countries of northern and western Europe such as Germany and Sweden, but being fingerprinted in Hungary means that, under EU rules, they risk being returned to Budapest as their official point of entry into the 28-nation EU.

EXHAUSTED CHILDREN

“My brother is in Sweden,” said one migrant, who declined to be named. “He told me to chop my hands off rather than give my fingerprints to the Hungarians. So we’re trying to find a way to Austria without meeting the Hungarian police.”

Some spent the night in the open on the border, warming themselves around open fires and roasting corn plucked from the fields. In the morning, parents tried to rouse exhausted children.

Rabie Hajouk, a 29-year-old IT engineer who said he was from the devastated Syrian city of Homs, told Reuters: "I want a country to be part of, I want a country to belong to, I want a culture, a civilization,"

"It's not for money or for food, it's for freedom, freedom of mind, for education. To be part of the civilized world."

Embroiled in a debilitating economic crisis, Greece has taken to ferrying mainly Syrian migrants from its overwhelmed islands to Athens. Some 50,000 hit Greek shores by boat from Turkey in July alone.

Some European leaders have complained that Greece fails to register its arrivals, meaning their first recognized point of entry is often elsewhere and Athens does not risk them being sent back.