Austria wants to help set up a “task force”. The Ministry of the Interior speaks of an “extremely challenging situation”. Sharp criticism comes from the grannies against the right.
In the course of the summer, Austria, Hungary and Serbia will work together even more closely than before to monitor their borders. This is announced by the Ministry of the Interior. Austria is to support the Hungarian and Serbian police in establishing a “Task Force to Combat Smuggling” build up. Thanks to the contributed technology such as thermal imaging cameras, all-terrain vehicles, drones and thermal imaging buses, previous joint operations can be “designed to be more effective”.
Cross-border cooperation will take place both at the level of the criminal police investigators and by Austrian police officers who are on duty directly at the Hungarian-Serbian border, said the interior minister Gerhard Karner in a broadcast. “In view of the current challenges,” according to Karner, “the cooperation isin the fight against gangs of people smugglers and illegal migration more important than ever”.
Hungarian Foreign Minister: Refugees “aggressive”
Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó, during a visit to Vienna in mid-July, railed against the increasing number of refugees from the south and “refugee-friendly Brussels”. The refugees on the southern border are “aggressive” and “armed,” Szijjarto claimed. Hungary describes itself “in the fight against migration from the south” as a “breakwater” for Europe. The right-wing government of the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is known for its rigid refugee policy. The barbed wire border fence built there in 2015 during the refugee crisis is now to be raised by one meter on the 150-kilometer-long border with Serbia. A new border fence is also to be built in the Danube-Drava National Park at the border triangle with Serbia and Croatia.
The Austrian Ministry of the Interior is now also talking about an “extremely challenging situation” on the Hungarian-Serbian border. And: Hungary needs the support of the EU countries. Last week, the Austrian general director for public safety, Franz Ruf, traveled to the Hungarian-Serbian border together with the heads of the Austrian border police and anti-smuggling officers to coordinate with the Hungarian state police chief. At the border point in Röszke and in the command center in Mórahalom, there was talk that border police officers were “attacked with sticks, stones and projectiles”. Armed conflicts between the smugglers have become more frequent, and there is increasing competition.
In Austria, more than 310 people smugglers were apprehended in the first half of the year up to mid-July. Their nationalities are “very different”: they are, for example, Hungarian, Serbian and Romanian citizens, but also refugees who would save themselves the costs of the actual smugglers by driving a vehicle, for example.
Austria not “target country number 1”
Austria is also badly affected by “irregular migration”. Unlike Germany, France and northern European countries, Austria is not “target country number 1,” according to the Ministry of the Interior. Most of the people who tried to flee to the EU came from the war-torn countries of Syria and Afghanistan. They can submit an application for asylum, which according to the Ministry of the Interior “must be processed”. The “probability of protection for these two nationalities is extensive”. Also in Hungary? “To a manageable extent.” So if you can, try again across the border. In addition to Syria and Afghanistan, people from so-called safe countries of origin such as Tunisia, Pakistan and Bangladesh also take the escape route.
According to the Belgrade Center for Asylum Assistance from mid-June, the number of refugees on the route through Serbia was more than 167 percent higher than in the previous year. According to Rados Djurovic, the head of the center, between 200 and 250 people from Kosovo, North Macedonia and Bulgaria entered Serbia illegally every day. At the same time, according to Djurovic, the number of so-called pushbacks in neighboring EU countries also increased. In the first five months of this year, the Belgrade Center for Asylum Assistance recorded more than 1,083 cases in which refugees from neighboring EU countries – Hungary, Romania and Croatia – were illegally pushed back to Serbia. According to Djurovic, however, the number of unreported pushbacks is likely to be much higher. In the first four months of the year, 95 refugees managed to apply for asylum in Serbia, and two of them got it.
Austria’s cooperation with Hungary and Serbia has already been criticized by NGOs such as “SOS Balkanroute” and “Omas gegen Rechts”. “SOS Balkanroute” on Facebook, for example, speaks of “inhumane horror pictures of Serbian police operations along the EU’s external borders, which are structurally, personally and financially supported by the Austrian Ministry of the Interior”. Last week, the Kleine Zeitung picked up a report by the NGO that Serbian Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin had told the press that Serbia was “no parking lot for scum from Asia”. Photos sent out by the Serbian Ministry of the Interior show “hundreds of men” who “hold their arms above their heads on command, walk bent over and finally in front of the Serbian Minister of the Interior Vulin, who accompanied the operation in a black uniform, also kneel,” writes the NGO.
Dealing with refugees “inhuman”
Susanne Scholl, spokeswoman for Grannies against the Right, described the cooperation with the Serbian government as “incredible that Austrian politicians work with such people”. Regarding the low chance of receiving asylum in Serbia and the EU country Hungary, she said that this makes it “incomprehensible” that Austria sends refugees back there. “We have an inhumane way of dealing with people on the run.”
In the current situation in particular, the Serbian police are an “important and reliable partner in the fight against organized smuggling,” emphasized a spokesman for Interior Minister Karner. The minister will address the “statements circulated in the media” at the next meeting with the Serbian interior minister.
Cooperation at the borders will also be a focus at the meeting between Chancellor Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) and Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán on Thursday in Vienna. As of September 1st, Hungary also plans to have an additional unit operational for patrolling its borders. In the first recording, 2,200 border officials are to be recruited, with a total of – according to the goal – 4,000 employees. According to the Austrian Ministry of the Interior, the training will be shortened and the training content will be designed for border protection, similar to the Austrian border police assistants. The Director General for Public Security Ruf offered support in training the new border police.
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