| In the last month more than one hundred
Africans claiming to be Liberians arrived
illegally in Hungary crossing the "green
border" from the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia, which is the only neighbouring
country that Hungary hasn't signed yet an
agreement concerning the deportation of the
people who cross the border illegally. "Most
of the illegal migrants just transit Hungary
helped by traffickers," said Dr. Zoltan
Csentes, Head of the Aliens Policing Department
at the National Headquarters of Hungarian Border
Guards (H.O.P.): "Trafficking is a booming
business. The Hungarian law unfortunately is very
mild. If they are caught, they get away
with only a few months of prison."
The alliens were detained by the Border Guards
and applied for refugee status under UNHCR
mandate. The asylum-seekers are being kept in the
holding centers of the Border Guards at the
Refugee Reception Center of Bicske or at the
Reception Center of the Hungarian Red Cross in
Budapest.
But the asylum seekers are not from the
countries they claim as thier homelands, said
Ditlev Nordgaard, UNHCR Deputy Representative
(Legal Affairs). "They do not have any basic
knowledge about the country they claim to come
from," he says. "They do not know
simple things like which tribes live in the
country, which are the warring fractions, how the
flag looks like, the neighboring countries...
None of them have any form of identification to
prove their nationality. They claim that they
lost it during the flight or that they never had
any papers issued to them."
One of the asylum seekers, James Felix, 40,
gave details of his journey: "The Christian
Church, the White Man, helped us. The Good
Samaritan helped us to the ship. We passed many
country but they have problems, so we went to one
country called Bulgaria but there's no food,
there's nothing. Then the pastor brought us to a
big lorry to get us to Germany. They dropped us
and said that we can hand ourselves to the
policeman. I told the policeman: 'I want to go to
Germany,' he said: "This is Hungary!' I said
'That's okay! I want you to help me out, 'cause
now, I have no father no mother, I'm alone.' So
they welcomed us to Hungary. Hungary is very
good. But my problem is not yet solved. I donŐt
know my future so I'm begging the governments to
help us, people from Liberia."
According to Felix the Liberian tribes are
Samaro and Sarscello.
When consulted, Dr. Geza Nagy-Fussi, the Head
of the African Studies Program at Eotvos Lorand
University said: "I never heard of the
Samaro and Sarscello ones. It might be that they
are tiny and very isolated tribal groups."
Another asylum seeker, Kelvin Vicent, 17,
stated just like Felix that he left Liberia
because of the war. That he also had no mother,
no father, no brother, no sister. "I'm
begging the government to solve my problem, for a
better life. I'd like to go back to school, for
my future. The last place I came from was Yugo. I
came here and I met a policeman and he said 'Oh,
Liberia?!' and I said 'Yes, Liberia. I'm here
because of the war. I don't know where I am. If
you can help me, you can help me!e So they took
me to the camp, gave me food. I like this place,
is better because there is peace."
"It is a very surprising
phenomenon," said UNHCR Representative,
Philippe Labreveux, amused by the gross lies of
the "Liberians".
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"All those we've seen so far have been
rejected, except for one person, who disappeared
after being interviewed. We had
"Liberians" before but not in such
large numbers. What is going to happen next I
don't know because those are not refugees, they
claim to be Liberians and they are not, so this
is not our responsibility but of the
authorities." This situation poses
problems to the Hungarian authorities.
Foreigners need new identity cards to travel
back home. That means they will stay here for
months until their embassy gets the papers for
them. "On top of it most of the times, they
provide us with false personal data, to stay here
longer," explained Csentes "Meanwhile
they fill in our holding centers. It is extremely
expensive."
But according to Gibril Deen, President of
Mahatma Ghandi Human Rights Movement - an N.G.O.
that aims at the improvement of the social
welfare of Africans in Hungary - aliens don't go
back to the border guards centers after being
dennied refugee status, because it's too far from
Budapest. "Sometimes they find a girlfriend
here in Budapest and stay with her, or find their
way further West."
The news of the 150 African people arrival
took him by surprise: "We get the
information too late. During the Kistarcsa period
it was much easier for us to lobby refugees
issues, because the foreigners were kept just
around Budapest. It is difficult to travel all
over Hungary. Before we could go there every
week. When there was a problem, we tried to
intervene so that the authorities wouldn't deport
them home to face prosecution, because some of
them don't know that they can apply for refugee
status. Sometimes we were the ones who took them
to UNHCR office. Now sometimes it happens that
before we arrived there, they already deported
them."
Nevertheless Colonel Attila Krisan, press
spokesman for the H.O.P., said the contrary:
"Our regulations forbid us to send back
people who cross the border illegally. To tell
them: 'Turn around and go back Eastwards from
where you came.' We check conscientious each
case, each individual, and if it's not just a
simple illegal border crossing - if they ask for
temporary protection or refugee status - then we
further them to the institutions who decide their
fate."
Deen would also like to have a
greater input in the decision making of the
eligibles for the refugee status, though
according to Labreveux this is not legally
feasible.
"The UNHCR just takes
decisions by themselves," fired Deen,
"without checking their headquarters in
Switzerland. In other countries the NGOs help the
UN. They interview the refugees together, because
some NGOs have a practical training about African
issues." (According to Labreveux, the office
in Budapest is the only UNHCR office in Europe
that determines the status of non-European
refugees because the Hungarian Government doesn't
want to.) "I know some people who have been
given refugee status in Hungary who are not fit
to have it," said Deen. "In 1994 an
Iranian called Ali Deene was deported from the
Kistarcsa camp to Iran, and he was prosecuted. He
is now in prison in Teheran. When at my request,
Thomas Birath, the Representative of UNHCR at
that time, inquired the authorities in Kistarcsa,
they apologized."
The Budapest Week
November 14-20, 1996
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