Fear and Prejudice: Just Another Brick in the European Refugee Wall

The European Union has still failed to agree on how to resettle 160,000 refugees among member states. While leaders bickered — countries built walls. Hungary became the first Eastern European member state to erect an unofficial razor wire fence on its border with Serbia. Other member states soon followed suit. 

Historian Timothy Garton Ash suggests in his recent article for the Guardian that:

"Mind walls are growing higher by the day. Their psychological mortar mixes totally understandable fears — after massacres perpetrated in Paris by people who could skip freely to and fro across the frontier to Belgium — with gross prejudice, stirred up by xenophobic politicians and irresponsible journalists."

The Hungarian wall towards Serbia, Croatia and Romania is the most visible barrier — but not the latest to be built in the EU. Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland have joined the anti-migrant, anti-refugee Eastern European rhetoric purported by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

​Meanwhile, Egypt has expressed its concern by European Union members to close their borders to refugees while the conflict in Syria continues. Deputy Minister of foreign affairs Hisham Badr has called for humanitarian protection of refugees within Europe's borders.

Macedonia is the most recent country to erect razor wire across its border with Greece to stop migrants from passing. And while Greece still tries to emerge from its economic breakdown, the country's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called for a more humane response to refugees from Europe.

As the refugee crisis took hold with record numbers arriving every day on Greek shores, Daesh militants attacked Paris killing 130 people.

It's since emerged that the 25 year old suicide bomber at the Stade de France attack entered Europe via the Greek Island of Leros in October. Ahmed al Mohammed was born in Syria.

​Yet it's been revealed in London newspaper the Telegraph, that Frontex, the European border agency warned the authorities more than 18 months ago of the potential threat from radicalized European jihadis exploiting the migration crisis and entering Europe and it's freedom of movement Schengen zone.

​Whether psychologically held together with mind mortar mixed by xenophobic politicians and press — or used to physically keep people back and stop refugees from moving on, the new walls of Europe are getting higher.