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REFUGEE CRISIS

IMMIGRATION

Hundreds of migrants sent back to Slovenia

Police in Carinthia have sent hundreds of migrants back to neighbouring Slovenia this week after they lied about their nationality in an apparent attempt to improve their chances of being granted asylum, police have said.

Hundreds of migrants sent back to Slovenia
Refugees in Spielfeld, Styria. File photo: APA

Since the summer, hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants have crossed into Austria, the last country on the so-called Balkan route to Germany, the chosen destination for most of the migrants. Many are transported through Austria straight to the German border.

In spot checks in the southern province of Carinthia, police and translators said they had noticed a rise in the number of unregistered people whose language skills did not match their purported nationality. 65 people were sent back to Slovenia on Wednesday, and around 100 over the weekend.

The spokesman for the police in Carinthia declined to say where the migrants who were sent back to Slovenia were from.

The flow of refugees and migrants into Austria from Slovenia has shifted to Carinthia after a fence was put in place at the main crossing between the two countries, further east in the province of Styria.

In Upper Austria, Greens MP Rudi Anschober has complained that German authorities are currently sending between 50 and 100 migrants back to Austria every day, on the grounds that they have no intention of applying for asylum in Germany and want to travel to Sweden to join relatives there.

Anschober complained that Upper Austria has had to find accommodation for an extra 2,000 people this month, who do not want to stay in Austria.

More than a million people have made the perilous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe this year, according to the UN refugee agency. The majority (50 percent) are from Syria, and 21 percent are from Afghanistan. At least 3,735 people are believed to have died trying to reach Europe.

FAR-RIGHT

Germany issues entry ban to Austrian far-right activist Sellner

Radical Austrian nationalist Martin Sellner has been banned from entering Germany, it emerged on Tuesday, days after he was deported from Switzerland.

Germany issues entry ban to Austrian far-right activist Sellner

Sellner, a leader of Austria’s white pride Identitarian Movement, posted a video of himself on X, formerly Twitter, reading out a letter he said was from the city of Potsdam.

A spokeswoman for the city authorities confirmed to AFP that an EU citizen had been served with a “ban on their freedom of movement in Germany”.

The person can no longer enter or stay in Germany “with immediate effect” and could be stopped by police or deported if they try to enter the country, the spokeswoman said, declining to name the individual for privacy reasons.

READ ALSO: Who is Austria’s far-right figurehead banned across Europe?

“We have to show that the state is not powerless and will use its legitimate means,” Mike Schubert, the mayor of Potsdam, said in a statement.

Sellner caused an uproar in Germany after allegedly discussing the Identitarian concept of “remigration” with members of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) at a meeting in Potsdam in November.

Reports of the meeting sparked a huge wave of protests against the AfD, with tens of thousands of Germans attending demonstrations across the country.

READ ALSO:

Swiss police said Sunday they had prevented a hundred-strong far-right gathering due to be addressed by Sellner, adding that he had been arrested and deported.

The Saturday meeting had been organised by the far-right Junge Tat group, known for its anti-immigration and anti-Islamic views.

The group is also a proponent of the far-right white nationalist Great Replacement conspiracy theory espoused by Sellner’s Identitarian Movement.

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