O! tempus! O! mores!
What times are these we live in nowadays?
Brother hates brother! Chases away the helpless in the blizzard from his warm hearth!
Though we are all your children.
Though we know we break your Fatherly heart!
Sadness. Bleakness.
Ella told me I should tell you... Oh! sadness and bleakness! Oh! Lord I forgot what she told me to tell you...
Dear Lord have mercy on me.
Oh! Fate! Oh! Cruel Fate!
Yes! She told me I should tell you that life is like a prison imprisoned inside another indifferent prison.

"Hungary prestige is at stake because there would be a series of cases brought up to Strasbourg in the near future," says Marton Ill, director of the Hungarian Center for Defense of Human Rights. "Authorities don't implement laws which were signed for three years already, even more acts against them without being punished."

Hungary has signed the 1951 Geneva Convention related to the status of refugees but with a geographical reservation. As a consequence it only examines European asylum seekers and leaves it to the UNHCR office in Budapest to examine non-Europeans. But in 1994 Hungary also signed the European Human Rights Convention (EHRC). Its Article 3 and the Aliens Laws regarding the deportation of foreigners at risk applies to all asylum seekers without limitation.

"We repeatedly told the authorities," said Ferenc Koszeg a Free Democrat MP, executive director of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, " it was two different things to be accepted as a Geneva Convention refugee and to be threatened by torture. If one is not a refugee doesn't mean he can be deported."

Since 1994 there were 863 cases rejected by UNHCR that Hungarian authorities did not examine if they were or not under EHRC provision. It is only two weeks ago that the Office of Refugee and Migration Affairs (ORMA) started to examine cases outside Europe. Presently a team of specialists are analysing the draft of new asylum seeker law which will drop the geographical limitation.

"There is this dream of integrating in Europe," said Koszeg describing the reasoning of law makers: " 'Since the Poles and the Czech lifted the geographic limitation we have to do it also, what the Brussels people will say? But what the ordinary people will say if we have a lot of Arabs and Africans coming here?' There is a lot of paranoia involved in it. Protecting the refugees is not a popular issue. Public opinion agrees to deport them because 'we have enough unemployment, we don't need to support these people.' "

Ill says authorities don't do a proper case examination, "they don't have the expertise to and are not willing to collaborate with NGOs though we have a rich data base."

Bela Jungbert, director general of the ORMA, says "This is a prerogative of authorities, at most NGOs can give an opinion."

This is how one of the last asylum seekers cases was solved:

On 25 December 1996 fifteen Syrian Kurds including eight children arrived in Budapest from Damascus at the airport. They were told that their visas were forged. They were kept in the the transit lounge and told they were not in Hungary.

"Because of the public interest they wanted to avoid scandal but didn't know how," said Koszeg. "They decided these people are not in Hungary because they didn't cross the border line, which is a fiction." Last year the Strasbourg decided in a case in Paris airport that the transit zone is in the territory of a country.

"They got here with the help of traffickers - they said it themselves - and said nothing about being persecuted because of their Kurd origin,"said Lt. Col. Jozsef Duzs, commander of the Budapest Airport Border Guards. "They agreed to go back, even complained for the one week delay until the first flight to Damascus was scheduled. Then out of the blue came a lawyer, Dr. Erzsebet Szigeti Gal from the Mahatma Gandhi Human Rights NGO demanding to let them enter the territory of Hungarian Republic. It was extremely surprising to see Human Rights NGOs associating with human traffickers. It gave me food for thought. Farther it is mind boggling that persons kept in high public esteem got involved in such cases, supporting these foreigners against Hungarian Republic interest. We are aware how intensely international human traffickers watch us. If they see that people with no asylum right can enter Hungary easily, then they will flood us with aliens."

Kurd people said they lived in permanent terror back in Syria: being constantly harassed for their political activity, for not wanting to fight for Syrian army, for having ethnic gatherings or putting the Kurd flag on the roof. That they were several times imprisoned, tortured and much persecuted. Finally they shut their small businesses, sold their valuables, and flew to Europe.

Here for 48 days they were permanently guarded in barracks with locked doors and barred windows.

"Though formally it looks as if they were imprisoned," said Duzs, "they actually haven't been for one second. We can't call prisoners persons that could freely go on any airplane their papers and tickets were valid. I protest vehemently against the distorted way the lawyer presented the situation. We interviewed them but apart from generalities they couldn't prove their persecution. This was confirmed by all other organizations we asked."

They waited for one month while UNHCR processed their requests for asylum and rejected them for lack of credibility. The situation is peaceful for Kurds in Syria was the answer.

"The background information they gave us didn't match the reality at all," said Ditlev Nordgaard, the UNHCR deputy representative who deals with legal matters. "They know the stories they have to say when asking for asylum."

Then the lawyer, presented the case to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and (ORMA). The same answer came from both sides.

Since Syria is not a member of the EHRC it cannot be asked to respect it, said Ill. "We do say that human rights are not respected in Syria. An Iraqi group was deported on December first to Syria and we lost track of them. Even the local UNHCR office couldn't find them. Here it is our moral dilemma, can we jeopardize our good reputation and send back people where they might get imprisoned or even killed? It's a similar situation with that of Hungarians from Romania, which for Hungarians is something they can relate to."

But the fact that they are discriminated against as a minority is not a reason to migrate in mass to another country, said Jungbert, himself a Ph. D. in Social Political Sciences from a reputable Romanian University. "What about the 11 million Russians of Ukraine or the 1,5 million of Hungarians of Romania? Minorities are not loved wherever democracy is not institutionalized."

(Up to January 1997 out of the 54,625 asylum seekers from Romania, 92% were ethnic Hungarians, said Pal Nagy from the Statistics Section of ORMA.)

"Our collaboration with UNHCR, particularly in this case, was exceptionally good," said Jungbert, "They decided on their status and we made the expulsion and deportation decision."

The human rights activists were afraid of immediate deportation, the only way to avoid it was to use the Strasbourg hotline. Next day the European Human Rights Commission in Strasbourg intervened and stopped deportation until their final decision on March 7th.

The bill handed to the lawyer for the 48 days cost at the transit zone barracks was Fts one million. The miser and the open-handed spend the same in long run, says a Kurd saying.

"It is a rich country that which can afford to spend millions out of taxes revenues on a refugee case," said Ill. "If this is acceptable, then we shouldn't complain that Hungary is poor."

They were moved to Bicske refugee camp to wait for the result for humanitarian reasons, for they had children, Youngbert said. "Being respectful of their human rights we couldn't limit their freedom of movement." They were free to walk in and out the camp to their heart content.

Thus they simply vanished one fine Wednesday day. Where, we don't know. Neither Gabor Vilagosi, one of the political secretary at the Ministry of Interior. "I am not a fortune-teller, to know where they dissapeared" he said. "If the lawyer wouldn't have been so persistent, the expenses wouldn't have escalated and they would have traveled back home to everybody's satisfaction. They accepted several times to return to Syria. This problem wouldn't have existed if certain persons haven't made them think that they might stay here without any legal right."

Have they crossed the Austrian border led by human traffickers? No, for the collaboration between the Austrian and Hungarian border guard is perfect, said Yungbert, illegal crossing are returned to where they came from on both sides.

"In our experience non-European asylum seekers are only transiting in Hungary. They (and even those we recognize as refugees) seem to move westwards easy and quickly," said UNHCR Representative Philippe Labreveux. "In fact who claim to catch hundreds if not thousands every year coming from Hungary complain that the Hungarians do not take them back."

According to Jungbert Hungary policy respects Hungary's safety, international agreements, European Union requirements and at the same time doesn't hurt personal human rights. "If there are such cases, they are really exceptions and they have to be examined without hasty generalization or manipulation and given the concrete correction," he said. "The fact that the Kurds haven't been deported shows once more Hungarian authorities willingness to cooperate with NGOs and Strasbourg."

Gibril Deen, president of Mahatma Ghandi Human Rights Movement NGO says he was told by Mr. Yungbert that "next time we won't repeat the same mistakes, they will be immediately sent back."

On Sunday January 26, at 3:20 pm, two Madagascar citizens, Mr. Maroson and Mr. Rabevahoaka, arrived at Ferihegy 2 for a one week training on environmental protection and work safety organized by Environmental Protection Ltd. under Unite Nation Industrial Development Organization's (UNIDO) umbrella. The costs covered by UNIDO were Ft one million. Though they got a perfect valid visa from the Hungarian embassy in Paris, the border guard declared their passports fake on the ground that they don't look like the sample they had. The citizens were not allowed to enter Hungary, they slept around benches and ate at the cafeteria until Monday morning when they were sent back at 7:20 am though Dr. Laszlo Kovacs, managing director of Environmental Protection Ltd., was promised they will be sent back only afternoon so that he could clarify the situation through UN channels. "UNIDO told us that the expelled persons were horrified by the Hungarian authorities treatment, and as a result our future collaboration with UNIDO were severed." Not to speak of the one million Forints loss.

Nine other Kurds from Syria asked for refugee status at the same airport terminal and they were not even given the asylum seeker application forms, being pushed in a ghetto of misinformation said Ill. "We were told by the border guards that they don't exist, though we spoke on the phone with them. We got out there at the airport and pointed them out. They told us they are tourists! The way foreigners are treated here shows - besides the degree of our xenofobia - also how authorities respect citizens rights. If they mistreat a foreigner, they might as well mistreat a Hungarian."

The Budapest Week, April 3-9 1997

I hope you've enjoyed her writing
and you will come visiting us again.
I hope I will hold my position.
Though in these times of mad racing, I doubt it.
Ella has fired the other webmaster . A quite a bouncy, emotional, little lovely mouse!
You might think I am happy about it?
Oh! No! You should have seen his trembling little ears when Ella told him with delicacy that due to a malfunctioning counter that generated some teasing fan letters.
She gently had to tell him that for the present he would have to take a long vacation away from her website.
It broke my heart to see his tiny ones asking for chocolate.
Still I will do my best to accomodate her wishes.
Yours sincerely,
Draby Ignatius