As for migrants, Slovakia is stuck between a rock (Czech Republic) and a hard place (Hungary)
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On the balcony of one of the several blocks of flats in Slovak Kúty, an important transport hub near the Czech border, a lady is watering pots. A peaceful day, not what worries her and the other residents are their new neighbors – unsettled migrants, mostly from Syria.
In early November, the Slovak Ministry of the Interior set up a tent city near a residential area and a train station that can house up to 200 migrants after increasing the number of reports of migrants stopping by towns and across fields near the Republic’s and Austria’s borders, reintroducing border controls with Slovak.
“My cousin [lives] in Vienna,” Mohammad explained, sitting on the bed and trying to call his cousin. “I will help me find a job.”
It was quite quiet in the large heated tent that Mohammed shared with the other Syrians. They probably talked to him on the phone, they were resting outside in the alley between two rows of tents. The daily routine in the tent city, guarded by police and soldiers, begins with a light breakfast and a doctor’s visit and ends with dinner. During the day, migrants wander around the train station, go to a nearby grocery store, plan their journey further west or go downtown.
However, their presence worries local people, although the police have not recorded any offenses or crimes committed by the migrants. To reassure people, organizations providing migrants with food and clothing released a statement in mid-November.
“We don’t meet criminals, we meet ordinary people who find themselves in a difficult situation,” they wrote. “To this day, not one of them has given us any reason to fear or worry about our safety.”
The unconvinced town of 4,000 people, just an hour away by train from Bratislava, wants the tent city gone. However, the government has no problem demolishing the tent city, while illegal migration still demands better protection of the EU’s external border in Hungary with Serbia. This is a difficult situation that the extreme right, which is relatively strong in Slovakia, wants to use for its goals.
Slovak and Czech police officers check trains in Kúty on November 23, 2022. Slovakia and the Czech Republic have strengthened their police patrols along their borders following an increase in illegal migration. (Source: Facebook/Ministry of the Interior of the Slovak Republic)
The camp remains
Local people told The Slovak Spectator that since the arrival of the migrants, mostly men, they are afraid to let their children go to school or play outside. They see migrants moving around the city as big children as a problem.
“I don’t agree with that [migrants’ presence in Kúty],” said the barman from a pub a stone’s throw from the camp. A mother herself, she said she was sorry for what the Syrians had gone through, but at the same time, they would feel sorry if the migrants were locked up.
Like the Syrian engineer Mohamm, every migrant who discloses the residence of the Slovak police will receive a document of legal residence after registration. It allows them to move around Slovakia, but does not grant them any rights, as they do not want to apply for asylum in the country.
“People should trust the state,” Miroslava Mittelmannová, head of the League for Human Rights, told TA3 news television last week. “The police know what to do.”
But the long-time mayor of Kútov, Branislav Vávra, has been at the head of those demanding the closure of the tent city from the beginning. As he explained to The Slovak Spectator, he does not oppose helping migrants, but claims that the state should provide help to migrants in almost empty facilities for asylum seekers.
However, the Ministry of the Interior points to the proximity of Kútov to the Czech Republic, through which migrants tried to reach Germany. International trains also stop in Kúty.
“Staying further from the route would complicate their plan to get there,” the ministry explained.
He added that the migration office has placed migrants in others if they decide to become asylum seekers. The nearest functional facility for asylum seekers is located in Rohovce, near the Hungarian border and close to the capital of the Slovak Republic.
A similar facility operated in Gbele, a small town next to Kútov, until the beginning of 2006, when the state sold the city building. The Gbelys are now trying to sell the building.
Kúty railway station. (Source: The Slovak Spectator)
A call for compassion
Meanwhile, in Kúty, local priest František Moško and a small group of volunteers are helping to feed the migrants in the tent city. They alternate shifts with three other organizations and parishes.
A few days after the construction of the tent city, he published a post on the Internet in which he pleaded with the local people to never spread the misinformation that was being spread about the migrants and to seek the truth about Islam and Muslims themselves.
He also pointed out the double standard when it comes to people’s perception of tragedies.
“I think it is a great contradiction to be moved by the horrors and victims of the Holocaust, to condemn Putin’s regime while looking at dead civilians in the media, and at the same time rebuke migrants and refugees from war. Syria.”
In a telephone interview for The Slovak Spectator, he admitted that he experienced several unexpected reactions from people. “I understand the negative reactions,” said Moško. “Fear is a natural thing, but we cannot live only from fear.”
Today, he describes the situation in Kúty as “calm” and claims that some people may be coming to terms with the fact that migrants are temporarily staying in their town.
An example is the grocery store next to the camp, where many migrants often spend their little money, the cashiers have already gotten used to the migrants, when in the last initial apprehensions.
“They didn’t do anything wrong – they’re harmless,” said one of the cashiers.
The Ministry of the Interior did not believe when the tent city of Kúty would be demolished, they only stated that illegal migrants would fall in during the winter, that its closure would be on the table.
Health workers provide health care to migrants in Kúty on November 10, 2022. (Source: TASR – Vladimír Miček)
A surprise for my sister
Seven years after the migration crisis in Europe in 2015, which Slovakia largely avoided, this topic was politically abused by far-right politicians, and although the Prime Minister at the time, Robert Fico, the country is living through these times again.
Fico, whose Smer is now in the opposition, made several anti-migration comments at a press conference in early November, and Marian Kotleba from the far-right ĽSNS party managed to attract a large crowd of people to a protest in Kútov in mid-November. near the camp against the presence of migrants. There he announced the establishment of the People’s Border Guard and accused Interior Minister Roman Mikulc from the ruling OĽaNO party of inaction and lying.
Prosecutor General Maroš Žilinka already announced in November that he would investigate whether public officials had committed a criminal act of failing to save Slovakia’s border with Hungary and exposing Slovakia to illegal migration. He has not released any names or further details since then.
However, as a result of the migration situation, the Minister of the Interior faced yet another parliamentary vote of no confidence on December 1st (seventh in total). Despite the victory, dissatisfaction with the minister is clearly growing. Last week, up to 71 deputies supported the vote, which is the highest number since the first vote of no confidence in Mikulac, and only five votes were needed to remove him.
He blames Mikulec for reintroducing temporary border controls in Austria and the Czech Republic in September after his minister and the police failed to increase the number of migrants from Hungary across the 665-kilometer border in Slovakia. As a result, migrants are stuck in Slovakia, as Hungary refuses to take them back, while the Czech Republic returns migrants to Slovakia after unsuccessful attempts to cross their territory. Most migrants do not want to stay in the Czech Republic, but want to continue their journey to Germany and Austria.
The minister, who has admitted on several occasions that Slovakia does not have the capacity to protect its long border with Hungary, claims that the Slovak police have not failed and points to the drafting of the bill. Schengen Borders Code – a document that allows the resumption of internal border control in the Schengen area only in the event of a threat to internal security.
“Migration at the EU’s external borders includes a large number of nationals of countries that should not be considered a threat to public order or internal security,” the document said.
In addition, Mikulec often points out that the re-introduction of internal border control does not actually solve the problem of irregular migration, but only throws it at Slovakia’s door. Any solution must therefore come at the EU level.
“If anyone thinks that by introducing border controls with Hungary, migrants from Slovakia will miraculously disappear, they are wrong or do not understand the issue of illegal migration,” he said, adding that better protection of the EU’s external border and changes to the EU’s asylum policy are key.
The European Commission so far only 20 measures on how to reduce migration on the so-called migration route through the central Mediterranean, not on the route through the Western Balkans. Despite this, Slovakia sent 40 police officers to Hungary to help protect the EU’s external border with Serbia, other Slovak police officers formed mixed teams with Hungarian colleagues to patrol the Slovak-Hungarian border.
From the end of September to November 15, the Slovak police detained 4,466 illegal migrants and 63 smugglers.
Despite the better-protected external border and police patrols on the Slovakian-Hungarian border, Mohammad Alshami, a 25-year-old political science graduate from the Syrian city of Homs, still managed to get to Kútov after a long time spent in Turkey.
He said he wanted to meet his sister living in Munich, Germany, who was unaware of his arrival.
“It will be a surprise,” he told The Slovak Spectator with his brother saying that he will come on the same journey next time.
This story was produced in collaboration with Reporting Democracy, a cross-border journalism platform operated by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network.