(Reuters) Hungary shut so-called migrant transit zones on its borders on Thursday, freeing some 300 refugees from prison-like conditions while at the same time hardening rules which will effectively bar future asylum applicants.
During the peak of Europe’s 2015 migration crisis, Prime Minister Viktor Orban ordered Hungary’s southern border to be sealed, blocking a route for hundreds of thousands of migrants.
Some have been stuck in the transit zones, areas of several hundred square metres on the border between Hungary and Serbia with shipping containers for lodging and surrounded by heavily-guarded barbed wire perimeters, for a year or more.
The zones, which are the subject of international lawsuits and have been criticised by human rights groups, were emptied after a European Union court ruled the practice unlawful, Orban’s chief of staff Gergely Gulyas said.
