Hungarian Border's Razor Wire Aims at Voters as Much as Refugees

Anas, a 22-year-old refugee from the devastated Syrian city of Aleppo, says the razor-wire fence on Hungary’s border with Serbia was so easy to get around that he barely noticed it. As long as Hungarian voters see it, though, it still serves a purpose for Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

The grim news of 71 dead bodies found in a Hungarian-licensed truck in Austria last week is helping focus the attention of European leaders on the flood of people into the region through the Balkans. But Orban, his nation’s most successful politician of the past quarter century, zeroed in months earlier. He used the platform of a January demonstration after the Charlie Hebdo terror attack in Paris to rail against“economic migration.”