UN urges EU not to send asylum seekers back to Hungary

Asylum seekers, including children, are being held in shipping containers surrounded by razor fences, the UN says. Refugees and migrants have long suffered dire living conditions in Hungary, a country accused by rights groups of “breaking all the rules” for asylum seekers, including vicious beatings and violent pushbacks by security forces. “The situation for asylum seekers in Hungary, which was already of deep concern to UNHCR, has only gotten worse since the new law introducing mandatory detention for asylum seekers came into effect,” Filippo Grandi, the UN’s high commissioner for refugees, said on Monday. Since the law came into force on March 28, all new asylum seekers, including children, have been “detained in shipping containers surrounded by high razor fences at the border for the entire length of their asylum procedures”, according to UNHCR. While other countries also detain asylum seekers, Pouilly said Hungary’s new law was extremely worrying because it makes detention “systematic and mandatory”.