The refugee with the megaphone, arrested for an act of terrorism was, in fact, calming the crowd down at Röszke

Author: András JÁMBOR

Original title: A terrorizmus miatt leültetett hangosbeszélős menekült valójában nyugtatta a tömeget Röszkén

Publication: kettosmerce.blog.hu, Photo: MTI – Zsolt CZEGLÉDI

Date: 11:57 20/09/2015

“The guy with the megaphone is called Jaszir. I was in the same cell as he was after we were arrested. I heard him calming down the refugees, who had lost their self-control and tried to push the fence in anger. Jaszir shouted at them to stop, and asked the police officers to do the same. You must remember this: all of you have seen it. But he is sitting here, accused of terrorism”, Tímea Beck from Komárom wrote on the Slovakian website Dennik N, translated by parameter.sk. The journalist was arrested by the police in Röszke on 17 September.

“Thirteen hours later, on the table in front of me there is my fingerprint, which I got as a souvenir from the police officer, who was rolling his eyes when taking it. This was the final stage of the police procedure, during which journalists were taken into custody based on the suspicion of having committed crimes punishable by several years of imprisonment”, the parameter.sk article continues.

The journalist says that she was in custody with two journalist colleagues of hers, one of whom had gotten injured during the police action. According to the report, all the journalists moved forward as, due to the lack of information, they, just like the crowd, thought that with the opening of the gate the refugees would be allowed to enter Hungary, and this had to be photographed or shot on video.

According to some other accounts, the people chanting “Thank you, Hungary! Thank you, Hungary!” let the women, children and families move forward, who then sat down on the ground at the front waiting to be allowed to enter. The police attack started afterwards, which is why many children, families and women got injured, as they had been let move forward.

The journalist also writes that the attack by the police on the refugees was brutal and caught them by surprise, as they thought that they were opening the border.

“The special forces, the big guys attacked the masses of refugees in an unorganised way. The police, however, were probably at fault. They were not fighting against terrorists. They attacked children, tore families apart and made women cry. They offended them”, she writes.

Eight women and families were arrested. A woman hugs her four-year-old child. She was shocked by the events. She says that she has two more daughters who got stuck with her husband in Serbia. She does not know how they are; they got separated by the border…”, the Slovakian journalist writes.

In the past few days, we also discussed in several articles that the actions of the police were more than problematic at the border in Röszke. One of the police’s own videos proves that the TEK (Anti-Terrorism Centre) units attacked a relatively passive crowd at a certain point in Röszke, and it was then that families, children and women got injured. According to a police expert talking to átlátszó (Transparent: a Hungarian watchdog NGO and investigative journalism outlet – trans.), the escalation of the conflict could have been completely avoided if the police had acted professionally and the authorities had had the means to prevent the police officers from having to use their own bodies to defend the border.