At the opening of the Hungarian parliament’s autumn session, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán delivered a grim speech where he, among other things, spoke of the relentless assault on nearly all flanks of the European Union’s external borders by illegal migrants, and underscored migrants’ increasing willingness to use violence.
In the speech, delivered on Monday, September 25th, Orbán likened the continuous torrent of illegal migrants landing on the Italian island of Lampedusa to an “invading army,” adding that not only have Hungarian authorities so far this year thwarted some 128,000 migrants from breaching the border but that violent attacks on guards have become increasingly common.
“Attacks on border guards have become commonplace,” the prime minister began. This year, he continued, “there have been 168 serious attacks” along Hungary’s border, resulting in many Hungarian police officers being injured. He continued,
Migrant violence is on the rise. For three nights now, Serbian-Hungarian patrol units have come under fire from automatic weapons. With this migrants have crossed the Rubicon. Under circumstances like these, Hungary cannot meet the demands of the Brussels bureaucrats.
One of the incidents Orbán referred to in his speech, according to reports from the Hungarian police, took place at 10:30 pm on Thursday, September 21st, and saw a joint Serbian-Hungarian patrol group of four detect four shots fired from the Serbian direction toward Hungarian airspace. Shortly thereafter, several short bursts were fired in the Mórahalom area at the temporary security border barrier.
The Hungarian police also reported:
The sound of a projectile hitting their immediate vicinity to their commanders, who decided to withdraw immediately, so the policemen retreated from the line of fire, and there were no personal injuries. The shots were presumably fired by several serial-firing weapons, most likely by members of human trafficking gangs with an illegal migrant background.
The Serbian and Hungarian sides held a border meeting in order to investigate the violation of border law, and the Csongrád-Csanád County Police Headquarters initiated proceedings against an unknown suspect on suspicion of misusing firearms or ammunition.
Gunfire along Hungary’s southern border has become increasingly common. On the morning of Saturday, September 24th, residents of Radanovác, in Subotica, were awakened from their slumber by the sound of gunshots.
Szilárd Almási, a father of several children from Šetka (Szátka in Hungarian), took to his social media page to spread awareness about the ongoing and increasingly out-of-control situation in the area.
Almási wrote:
You drink your coffee. You open the window for fresh air. You sit back in the chair at your kitchen table and listen to the three shots being fired. You can clearly hear the machine gun. It’s not far from here. You sip your coffee. How much longer … and we will be tomorrow. The thing is, I’m sure it’s not. This morning air is full of fear … and the smell of death.
Amid what appears to be shaping up to be another migrant crisis like that seen during 2015 and 2016, several member states of the EU Schengen area have announced inter-Schengen border controls with their neighbors, including France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Poland.
