[ad_1]
Despite intense border controls and travel restrictions in Corona 2020, the police were able to detain more than 21,600 people who were found or entered illegally – compared to 2019, an increase of twelve percent. This is clear from the 2020 tractor report presented yesterday by the Interior Minister, Karl Nehammer (VP).
One of the main reasons for this is immigrants who are trapped in the Balkans and who wanted to use smugglers to go to destination countries in the West. From his point of view, Austria is “the first rich country” in the EU. Furthermore, traffickers would specifically recruit their victims on the grounds that there was good medical care and vaccinations against Covid in Austria, reported Gerald Tatzgern of the Central Office to Combat the Crime of Smuggling.
Those who want to cross the Serbian-Hungarian border pay very different prices to smugglers: from 200 to 3000 euros. If the fences have to be overcome, the price also depends on the number of ladders provided by the tugs, Tatzgern said. In the cheapest variant, there is only one ladder to climb. It can only be lowered by jumping from a height of several meters: children in particular are seriously injured. During the pandemic, smuggling gangs were increasingly reliant on trucking their victims because freight traffic was not restricted. Nehammer referred to an accident that had recently occurred on a Croatian highway. Syrians hid in the trailer. The truck overturned, causing four deaths and 19 seriously injured.
Information campaign for truckers
Most of the time truckers know nothing about it, because smuggling gangs search for parked vans in rest areas, cut tarps off the roofs of trailers, and towed people get on. The Ministry of the Interior is planning an information campaign for truckers together with the Chamber of Commerce.
Police identified and captured 311 traffickers in the previous year, 69 more than the previous year. Most of the perpetrators, that is 60, came from Syria, in second place are 37 Austrian citizens, followed by victims of trafficking from Iraq (28), Romania (22) and Turkey with 18 suspects.
