Hungary sending thousands of police to stop migrants breaching border fence

Hungary will send thousands of policemen to its southern border with Serbia where it is building a security fence to stem an influx of migrants, a top government official said on Tuesday. Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff, Janos Lazar, said the deployment of additional border guards was required because of what he called the increasingly aggressive and resolute behaviour of migrants. Hungary is part of the European Union’s Schengen zone of passport-free travel, making it attractive to migrants transiting the non-EU Balkans. Hungary aims to complete a 3.5-metre-(11.5-foot)-tall fence along its 177-km (110-mile) frontier with Serbia, a project sharply criticised by Belgrade and the United Nations refugee agency, by November.

Several thousand police officers will be deployed to the Serbian border whose task will be to defend this border section.

Janos Lazar, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff

Lazar said the government would also propose more drastic punishment for human trafficking. Many migrants pay thousands of euros (dollars) to trafficking gangs to get to Europe, usually on overloaded boats crossing the Mediterranean that have at times capsized and sunk, killing hundreds of people. Antal Rogan, head of the ruling Fidesz party’s parliamentary group, has said that as many as 200,000 to 300,000 migrants may try to reach western Europe through Hungary this year. More than 150,000 have reached Europe by sea so far in 2015.

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