Ai Weiwei showing his installation with of a 70 meter long rubber boat with 280 larger-than-life figures of refugees hanging from the ceiling of the National Gallery in Prague, Czech Republic, 16 March 2017. Michael Heitmann/Press Association. All rights reserved. The CEE countries have in the past few years taken a very strong stance against refugees. They are not willing to host refugees – whether this involves the claim that these are people from different cultures or have different religions, or blaming the inadequate infrastructure and the fact that people do not want to come to these countries. There is a rise in negative public attitudes towards Muslims and other foreigners.
For instance: the Czech Republic systematically abuses migrants’ rights as part of a deterrent strategy. The number of detained migrants rose from a few hundred in 2013 to 8,500 in 2015. The Bulgarian police continues to “apprehend people who arrive, to fingerprint and detain them for deportation”. And there are an increasing number of reports of violent push-backs and collective expulsions from Bulgaria. Hungary has just passed a law that allows for automatic detention for all asylum seekers. Hungary has just passed a law that allows for automatic detention for all asylum seekers.
There is a direct connection between the stance taken towards migration and refugees and the rule of law crises in CEE countries, as migration flows have been used by rightwing populists to fuel and justify skepticism about human rights, the rule of law, and the EU legal order, and to block implementation of EU solidarity measures such as relocation.
