By Judith Finn, www.LiveBudapest.com
Hungary has just thirteen years of experience with refugee issues, but shares a border with former Yugoslavia and Romania, all refugee hotspots since 1989. The country has handled large influxes from Romania in 1989, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo beginning in 1991, as well as admitted asylum seekers from all corners of the world. Hungary has the same number of years' experience with EU member nations requesting tighter security at the border.
According to statistics from the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, Hungary is a transit nation, which means that refugees would like to keep moving onto Germany, Austria, France, Italy and other EU nations. Fifty-two percent officially leave the country, 10 percent remain in the Hungary, and the rest simply disappear. Meanwhile, the country has turned away close to 300,000 at its borders.
Since September 22, Hungary has exercised an unofficial policy of segregating Afghani refugees, for a three-day period locking them into the refugee facility in Debrecen. The fears voiced by victims of Afghanistan's Taliban rulers are mostly for family members. Cut off from the rest of the world since stepping into the tunnel of human migration, they await any news.
A former civil engineer from Kabul first paid for his own release from jail, then for his passage to Hungary in August. Upon his arrival on October 12, he paid for the passage of his family. Only later did he learn of the events of September 11 and the resultant bombing of Kabul. "During the way, we do not know the news. We haven't television. We haven't radio, and no one told of the news. We were feeling all through the trek that they wanted to catch us. I gave more money to another person to bring others here. I don't know what happened to them. They are in Kabul. We don't know how they are, maybe they all died. Maybe they are weak."
A 20-year-old who fled Afghanistan eager to begin life compared his circumstances in the camp to a prison. "It was very difficult in Afghanistan to live. I would like to say that [Afghanistan is] one of the countries in the world we can say that in the current situation is quite full of disaster. No one can live, everyone wants to find a way to fly out from there.
" I decide to fly out from there, to find somewhere to live. So it came to be approximately two weeks that I am in here in Debrecen. But this is also like a jail here, we came here to live, there is no permission for us to go out in here. I think if I were in my country I would be in a jail better than here; there is no differentiation between there and here.
"We are quite against terrorism," he added.
In Hungary the Afghani refugees are awaiting the basic papers which would allow them to leave the refugee camp. To date, roughly half of the newly-arrived 1000 refugees are free to leave camp facilities while the others still lack proper documentation in the form of medical and security clearance.
The most recent influx of asylum seekers has pushed the capacity of the Debrecen camp, and security policies introduced by the Hungarian authorities bridge on human rights violations. With war, there is always sympathy for victims. In Hungary, sympathy for the victims of the Taliban government has been confused with the politics of war leaving many human rights observers alarmed by the state of affairs.
Ferenc Kôszeg, president of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a non-governmental organization focused on the protection of human rights, says that Hungarian government, while trying to send a strong message of protection to its citizens, has sacrificed the rights of refugees.
"These people left Afghanistan because they oppose the Taliban regime, so are enemies of the Taliban regime, of course it is possible that there are some agents among them. No one can exclude that. Therefore security and control is important but it cannot curb legal rights of asylum seekers and refugees," said Kôszeg.
Recommendation 1278 of the 1951 Geneva Convention on refugees and asylum seekers in eastern and central Europe passed in 1995 opposes the noticeable abuse of the right to asylum, to quote, "because everything must be done to counteract the reasons which give rise to xenophobic sentiments in individual countries." The Hungarian Helsinki Committee was among the first to protest the austere lock down measures in Debrecen on September 22, when all Afghanis were locked inside, and the former residents were relocated to the other camps.
András Kovács, program coordinator of Menedék, a Hungarian NGO focused on rights protection, saw the war-like defense measures at the camps. "At the beginning what we experienced at the camps were police and the military. There were huge Tomi guns, German shepard dogs and men in camouflage."
Both Kôszeg and Kovács reported that these defenses had never before been implemented in Hungary. Furthermore in the wake of the September 11 attack, no other European nation activated such strong security at refugee camps. Both NGOs protested to the government that the measures introduced were against both the Geneva Convention and the Hungarian Constitution.
Kôszeg approached the ECRE (European Council for Refugees and Exiles) to make a comparison of security measures around Europe. "We got an answer that they don't have any information about anything like what we have going on in Hungary," said Kôszeg.
It was a positive sign that the festive events at the Debrecen camp on October 15 were allowed to run despite the crackdown. A Menedék worker highlighted a few overall improvements, a cleaned-up dormitory, less guards on patrol, dance and music performances to mark the opening of the camp's new community leisure room. It was the first occasion that members of the press were allowed to enter the camp.
Áron Holló, who works on-site for Menedék at the Debrecen camp, points out that, at the overcrowded facility, the already slow process of paperwork could become more problematic. "There are problems with the medical service in the camp here. One of the main problems is that there is a clinic here on the ground floor which should be closed but it is open. From the moment of their arrival they are put under the quarantine, but then they are free to move about the camp because the clinic is overcrowded. The whole camp is too crowded." Holló expects a solution, but he does not know when. "It is their obligation to solve the problem; it is a question of human rights," he said.
Support for the government's strong measures came from one surprising source: Nahimi Sharif, an Afghani businessman living in Hungary for 18 years. "Hungary doesn't absolutely follow the human rights, but most of the time they do," said Sharif. "On the other hand I understand that there was a terrorist attack on the United States that most likely originates in Afghanistan." Sharif said he had not personally experienced the incidents of personal document requests or vehicle searches that other Afghanis in Budapest have experienced since the September 11 attack, but he has noticed a significant decline in the clientele of his restaurant Montana located on Üllôi út.
Sharif was a former employee of President Burhanuddin Rabbani's government in Afghanistan which was overthrown by the Taliban in 1996. He foresees the day to return to his homeland, after the Taliban is out of power.
"All the Afghanis have a patriotic feeling and most of them would or should go back after the fall of the Taliban. At any level the country will need their help whether in the building of houses or just with their minds and their souls or with the skills they've learned while abroad."
Also surprising is the sense of hope that is shared by his countrymen in the Debrecen camp for a day in the future when their homeland will be safe, even if the Afghani refugee problem is far from solved. Said one former university student, "If the Taliban leave Afghanistan, after that I can go back. I will start the university after the Taliban leave. I don't know when, only god knows."
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28.11.2001