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 Unrest flared briefly at a crowded reception center in the border
region of Roszke, with a police spokesman saying tear gas had been
fired.
Police said a record 2,533 migrants – most of them from Syria,
Afghanistan and Pakistan – were caught entering Hungary from Serbia
on Tuesday. Another 1,300 were detained just by 9.30 a.m. (0730 GMT)
on Wednesday.
More will have passed unnoticed, walking through gaps in an
unfinished barrier to a Europe groping for answers to its worst
refugee crisis since World War Two.
Hungary, which is part of Europe’s Schengen passport-free travel
zone, is building a fence along its 175-km (110-mile) border with
Serbia in a bid to keep them out, taking a hard line on what
right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban says is a threat to European
security, prosperity and identity.
Government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said parliament would debate next
week whether to employ the army in the border effort.
 “Hungary's government and national security cabinet ... has
discussed the question of how the army could be used to help protect
Hungary's border and the EU's border,” Kovacs said.
Authorities said over 140,000 migrants had entered Hungary from
Serbia to far this year. The numbers traveling through the Balkans
have soared in recent weeks, with 3,000 crossing into Macedonia
daily from Greece then whisked by train and bus north to Serbia and
beyond.
"IT'S FOR FREEDOM"
The chief commissioner of Hungarian police, Karoly Papp, said police
were readying six special border patrol units of an initial 2,106
officers, equipped with helicopters, horses and dogs, to be sent in
depending on the situation on the Serbian border.
“They don’t have and will not get an order to shoot,” Papp told a
news conference.
In Roszke, the police spokesman said some 200 migrants at the
reception center where unrest flared had refused to be
fingerprinted.
Almost all hope to reach the more affluent countries of northern and
western Europe such as Germany and Sweden, but being fingerprinted
in Hungary means that, under EU rules, they risk being returned to
Budapest as their official point of entry into the 28-nation EU.
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"I want a country to be part of, I want a country to belong to, I
want a culture, a civilization," said Rabie Hajouk, a 29-year-old IT
engineer who said he was from the devastated Syrian city of Homs.
"It's not for money or for food, it's for freedom, freedom of mind,
for education. To be part of the civilized world."
Embroiled in a debilitating economic crisis, Greece has taken to
ferrying mainly Syrian migrants from its overwhelmed islands to
Athens. Some 50,000 hit Greek shores by boat from Turkey in July
alone.
Some European leaders have complained that Greece fails to register
its arrivals, meaning their first recognized point of entry is often
elsewhere and Athens does not risk them being sent back.
Serbia said around 10,000 migrants were passing through the country
at any time, their stay lengthening as Hungary nears completion of
its border fence.
“The situation will get worse, when winter arrives. We’re getting
ready to look after double that number,” Serbian Prime Minister
Aleksandar Vucic told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
(Reporting by Krisztina Than in BUDAPEST and Matt Robinson in
BELGRADE; Writing by Matt Robinson; Editing by Giles Elgood)
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