97 Kurdish refugees stranded in closed camp in Hungary: foundation
BUDAPEST,— Ninety-seven Kurdish refugees have been detained in a closed camp in Hungary for nearly a year, the Summit Foundation for Refugees and Displaced Affairs said on Tuesday.
Head of the Summit Foundation Ari Jalal said that his group is working with the Hungarian embassy in Iraq in an attempt to resolve the issue.
“We will meet with the Hungarian consul-general in Iraq in the near future in an attempt to find a solution for the condition of those refugees, at least to make the camp open,” he added.
Kurdish refugee Karzan Mohammed, a resident of Zakho, told the Summit Foundation that the camp is in the Hungarian town of Tompa.
“The camp is closed and it is surrounded by a razor-wire fence and the refugees cannot go out,” Mohammed said. “We are only given two meals per day, which no one can eat.”
“We entered Hungary legally, but the police arrested us. All of us have been fingerprinted.”
A number of the refugees have long-term medical conditions, such as autism or psychological issues, he added.
An estimated 13,522 Iraqi refugees have sought asylum in Hungary over the past four years, according to the Summit Foundation, which is also known as Lutka.
Since 2014, as many as 289 people from the Kurdistan Region have drowned in the Aegean Sea while trying to emigrate to Europe, the Iraqi Migration and Displacement Federation said last year.
133 people from the Iraqi Kurdistan have also gone missing on the road to Europe, according to the Federation.
According to the federation’s statistics in 2017, 240,000 people from the Kurdistan Region and Iraq have traveled to Turkey as tourists in the first six months of this year. Most of them have gone to Greek and Italian coasts, the statistics indicated.
Hundreds of Kurds have died or got missing en route to Europe.
Copyright © 2019, respective author or news agency, nrttv.com | Ekurd.net
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