Since the beginning of April, about 100 refugees refuse to leave the so called “pre-integration camp” in Bicske. In this camp, refugees are allowed to stay for a maximum of six month (for families: twelve months) after they received a residence permit in Hungary. After the end of this period, they have to leave the camp and because of insufficient support from the Hungarian state, many refugees had become homeless in the past. In the current situation, the Office for Nationalities (OIN) only offered some places in homelessness shelters to the people affected as a solution for this structural problem. Apart from the obvious fact that these shelters can never be a proper starting point to integrate in Hungarian society, OIN was not even able to offer enough places. For this reasons, the above mentioned refugees refused to leave the camp: They simply don’t want to become homeless.
The reaction of OIN to this kind of civilian disobedience has two dimensions: First, they cut every kind of support. Concretely, this means (inter alia):
- Not providing any more money
The OIN does not provide any more financial support to the people with international protection, who overstayed their time in Bicske. Consequently, they cannot buy even food for themselves. The OIN has ceased to provide their weekly allowance for food of around 6500 HUF,which they had been provided before 1 April, 2013. This leads to the fact that these people (including families with children!) – due to the lack of working possibilities – are forced to beg money or food from the other people in the camp who are still entitled to their weekly allowances.
- No medical care, no medication
The OIN has stopped to provide medication and medical care to the people of concern. These people are not allowed to visit the resident nurse and the doctor in the camp. This can lead to the deterioration of the health of many of the people of concern, especially those with chronic diseases or serious psychological problems. There are already huge tensions resulting from the fact that people with psychological problems have not received their crucial medication.
- Not providing travel allowances
The people of concern are not provided with travel allowances any more. The MSG does not understand how the OIN can expect the people of concern to seek for housing solutions outside of the city of Bicske under these conditions. Given the fact that neither money, nor adequate job opportunities are provided for them, the people of concern do not have money to pay for their public transportation tickets to be able to visit possible housing solutions.
On the other hand, OIN is creating a kind of “state of emergency” by transferring more and more people (including people who are still in procedure) to the Bicske camp. Approximately 500 people are living at the camp at the moment. It is not surprising, that this cynical policy of overcrowding by OIN (should) led to more and more conflicts between “new” and “old” refugees in Bicske. As it seems, this is exactly the strategy of OIN to “solve the problem”, in a sense to get rid of the “over-stayers”. Here, two videos of the current situation in Bicske:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0DV6RpbmvI&feature=youtu.be