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Police accused of abusing migrants

March 14th, 2017

A conservative author who doesn’t object in principle to Hungary’s policy of preventing illegal migrants from crossing its borders in their efforts to reach western Europe, warns however that the inhuman treatment of of those who cross the razor-wire fence is absolutely intolerable.

On Mandiner, Katalin Lukácsi does not take sides in the debate over whether Hungarian police systematically abuse migrants crossing illegally into Hungary through the border fence, but raises her voice against “wounding helpless people by humiliating them”. Apart from the latest report by Doctors Without Borders, she writes, such cases have been reported by five other NGOs, including two Catholic charities. She admits that violence ‘may be legitimate’ in the defence of a country’s borders; what she deems inadmissible is wanton violence. She also concedes that concerns about the potential ‘Islamisation’ of Europe are legitimate. Christianity however, she concludes, cannot be protected with unchristian methods.

Magyar Nemzet’s Tamás Lőrincz writes that police violence has been reported in Hungary in dozens of cases out of the many tens of thousands of contacts between police and illegal migrants in the past years. According to data he obtained from the Prosecutor’s Office, 44 such cases have been reported to the authorities over the past 18 months, 17 of which were filed by local commanders and prosecutors. Most of the files have been closed due to lack of evidence. Two police officers have been fined and another four complaints are still being investigated.

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