Migrants dreaming of EU safety trapped at Ukrainian border

Mohammad Nahik limped and sometimes crawled, hampered by his one missing leg, across half a dozen borders from his native Afghanistan as he sought safe haven in the EU.

But like thousands of other like-minded illegal migrants, he now sits under guard in a Ukrainian detention centre, intercepted trying to sneak with his wife and son across this final frontier into the European bloc.

"I have to be accepted in some country as a refugee because I am not planning to go back. Because my life is in danger there. Because there is nowhere for my son, there is nowhere for my wife there," said Mr Nahik.

This sleepy town in western Ukraine has become the preferred juncture for human traffickers who, for a fee, try to slip their charges into one of four EU member states nearby: Hungary, Poland, Romania or Slovakia.The roughly 20-day journey from Afghanistan across the porous borders of the former Soviet Union costs migrants some €7,000-€10,600, of which Ukrainian traffickers take as much as a 50 per cent cut, according to the Kiev magazine Korrespondent.

In recent years, the number of migrants from Central Asia and the former Soviet Union eyeing life in the EU has grown, while migration from Asia and Africa has dropped, said Viktor Chumak, an analyst with Kiev's Centre for International Studies. But the crossing into EU territory has become more difficult.

More migrants are being stopped and put in detention centres since security was beefed up on both sides of the border with the enlargement in 2007 of the Schengen visa zone - within which there are no border identity controls - to include Ukraine's neighbours.

Last year, the EU gave Ukraine 30 heat detectors "capable of detecting a mouse from 10 kilometres away," said Pavlo Cheremet, a spokesman for the country's border guard.

"Every year, it becomes more and more difficult to cross the border illegally," added Mr Cheremet.

"Schengen countries are deploying more hardware, more heat detectors, more guards," said Ilya Pirchak, who works with a local nongovernmental organisation providing aid to migrants. Mr Chumak said the tighter security measures had forced migrants to seek other, safer routes into the EU.

"The passage through Ukraine has become too risky," Mr Chumak remarked. "Now the interesting routes for migrants pass through the Balkans, Bulgaria and Romania."

But hundreds of migrants still pack the small rooms of several makeshift Ukrainian detention centres like the one in Mukachevo where Nahik spends his days slumped on a metal cot, staring at the peeling wallpaper.

Ukrainian authorities regularly catch migrants from countries like India, Pakistan and China believed to be trying to sneak into the EU.

In recent years, Ukraine, with help from the EU, has built two dormitories, each with a capacity of 1,000, to hold those intercepted at the border.

Many migrants, like Mr Nahik and his family, have no passports or identity papers. Officials said they could be under guard for several months while awaiting expulsion.

"We left Afghanistan because of death threats" from the Taliban, Mr Nahik explained in English. "My wife played on a volleyball team. They said they would kill her if she didn't stop."