‘We don’t have a life here’: refugees find scant solace in hardline Hungary

Pias, a young Iraqi refugee who made it to Hungary, was initially keen to show off his English. But after four months in a detention camp, fear and uncertainty had rendered him mute.

Despite paying the Hungarian authorities €1,200 (£1,018) to send him to a more open facility, the 19-year-old feared being hauled back into custody under a draconian new law.

Drafted by the rightwing government of Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s strongman prime minister, and passed overwhelmingly by the Hungarian parliament on Tuesday, the measure transfers all asylum applicants to a network of new camps made out of shipping containers. It is due to come into force in a week.

The major intensification of the Orbán government’s anti-migrant offensive, has been condemned as a flagrant breach of EU law by lawyers and human rights groups, who are urging fellow member states to act.

The consequences for refugees like Pias would be particularly onerous. He arrived in Hungary as a refugee last year and was dispatched to one of the country’s detention centres – characterised as prisons by critics – before accepting the offer of release to an open reception centre in exchange for a payment, officially described as “bail”.

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