A recent report published by the United Nations Refugee Agency stated that over 2,500 irregular migrants had lost their life or gone missing in the Mediterranean Sea during the first three quarters of 2023. Boarding overcrowded boats that are certainly unfit for making the perilous journey from the coast of North Africa to Europe’s closest shores is, usually, the main reason to account for the tragic loss of human life in the Mediterranean. And as the atrocities in the Middle East persist, the number of irregular migrants travelling to Europe will surely increase, as will the number of accidents in the sea and the migrant death toll.
Yet more recently, irregular migrants that managed to move to Europe find it equally difficult to reach their final destination around the continent. Armed groups of smugglers controlling the migrants’ entry points to European Union territory do not hesitate to fight against rival gangs in battles close to Hungary’s border with Serbia. Residents in Hajdukovo, Horgos, and Subotica in Serbia have been rattled by such incidents, particularly, after an under-age girl fell victim of gang-related violence.
Although the Hungarian border fence was erected to keep irregular migrants out, it now seems to serve as a checkpoint for the smugglers to ‘regulate’ the migrants’ entry into the EU, as well as to discourage any individual attempts to cross into Hungary. On many occasions, migrants are asked to march across the terrain of several countries before reaching Hungary’s border awaiting their turn to set foot on EU land. During their stay at ill-equipped facilities – often with no provisions available – near the border, migrants are often abused by the smugglers. Ultimately, those migrants that qualify for entering the EU need first settle all financial issues with their smugglers, before they are allowed to cross the fence. The border “fence is being constantly damaged,” stated Gabor Balog, head of the anti-trafficking unit of Hungarian police, and added “They use various power tools. They cut huge holes in the fence, hundreds of them, the size of doorways.” Once they have crossed the border, migrants are then chased by Hungarian police and the so-called “‘border-hunters’ which have been documented by Serbian medical workers and Hungarian journalists, but they are denied by Hungarian police.” Those migrants caught by Hungarian patrols are illegally pushed back to Serbia, while the more successful ones continue their perilous journey in Europe. Some of the latter are often picked up by smugglers’ vehicles driving at high speed before they crash their passengers, since more than 20 such crashes have been recorded in Hungary this year so far. No matter how near Austria or Slovakia seem to be on the map, the land route irregular migrants are forced to follow is little less hazardous.
Christos Kassimeris, PhD
Professor Christos Kassimeris heads the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at European University Cyprus and is coordinator of the BA in European Politics and Communication. Before joining European University Cyprus, he was teaching European Integration Politics and International Relations of the Mediterranean for three years at the University of Reading. He is the author of European Football in Black and White: Tackling Racism in Football (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007), Greece and the American Embrace: Greek Foreign Policy Towards Turkey, the US and the Western Alliance (I.B. Tauris Academic Studies, 2009) and Football Comes Home: Symbolic Identities in European Football (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2010), editor of Anti-racism in European Football: Fair Play for All (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009), The Marketing of War in the Age of Neo-Militarism (Routledge, 2011) and The Politics of Education: Challenging Multiculturalism (Routledge, 2011), and has several publications in political science journals. He is also Visiting Research Fellow at the University of De Montfort.
Source: BBC, Migrants to Europe dying in gun battles and car crashes, by Nick Thorpe, November 2, 2023.
Banner image by Marco Bianchetti on Unsplash.
