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GENEVA / AP
The UN refugee agency on Monday took the rare step of urging European Union members to suspend returns of asylum-seekers to their partner, Hungary, faulting its new policy of systematically placing migrants in containers and expelling any migrants not holding the proper papers.
UNHCR says that since a tough new law took effect on March 28, Hungary’s government has detained 110 people — including children — in “shipping containers surrounded by high razor fences at the border” while their asylum cases are reviewed.
Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said the situation for asylum-seekers in Hungary was already a concern before the measures, and “has only gotten worse since the new law introducing mandatory detention for asylum-seekers came into effect.”
The move is bound to put a new spotlight on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government, which has faced scorn from U.N. agencies and advocacy groups over its tough policies on migrants — even if its populist message has resonated in the country and elsewhere in the West.