Originally, this militia was supposed to be the equivalent of village policemen, responsible for protecting the fields of the farmers in this border town... But I have spoken with a local farmer who told me there'd been no problems with theft or crime from the migrants, either in homes or in the fields.



In my opinion, this militia is above all else about the mayor portraying a certain image. For instance, he never goes anywhere without his militiamen...



As you can see on Facebook, he likes showing that he's protecting his village. In his posts, the vocabulary he uses is revealing. He never speaks of 'migrants' or 'refugees.' He prefers to call them 'invaders,' and future terrorists. Of course, no one is shocked by this – it's the ambient discourse here, especially among politicians. [Editor's note: In July, for instance, the Hungarian Prime Minister, Victor Orbán, compared immigration to a "poison."]



Three migrants stopped by guards in Ásotthalom. Photo published on Laszlo's Facebook page. Blurred by France 24.



"Migrants report being attacked at the border"

What's worrying is that he's started a sort of fad. More and more groups are forming to 'hunt' migrants at the Serbian border. The idea of 'self-defence,' of taking up arms ‘against the invaders,' is spreading, even if we're still talking about a fairly small number of people.



Ásotthalom's patrol is legal with regards to Hungarian law, and the men have the right to carry guns so long as they don't fire them. The mayor is in total control of all the militia's communications, so it's hard to know too much about it – what it does with migrants after capturing them, for instance. We get reports from migrants attacked at the border, but we don't know who's behind these incidents. For the refugees, militiamen and uniformed police look alike, and this creates an even more confused atmosphere.



"There's a fascination for his personality"

For us, the humanitarian workers, it's impossible to work in this village. We're not welcome there. The inhabitants don’t seem to care. On the contrary, the mayor is very popular. I think there's a fascination for his personality. He ended up in Ásotthalom a bit randomly. Although he was born in the region, he started his political career in Budapest. Then he made this village his political showcase. He's cultivating this image of a young man, surrounded by henchmen, who's defending the border."



A video made in September 2015.





Our Observer Márk Zoltán Kékesi is a professor of sociology in Szeged, just a few kilometres from Ásotthalom. With the Hungarian citizens' collective Migzsol, he helps refugees who are stuck at the Serbo-Hungarian border. He's worried about Laszlo's militia and the mayor's popularity.By last September, Laszlo had already become a subject of debate, having published a surreal YouTube video in which he warned off migrants while images of police on motorcycles and horseback, in cars and even in helicopters played in the background, accompanied by an action-movie soundtrack. "Hungary is a bad choice, Ásotthalom is the worst," he said. He's also known for having founded the HVIM, the "Sixty-Four Counties Youth Movement," a group that is nostalgic for the era of Greater Hungary – the territory of Hungary before World War I, which included parts or Romania, Croatia, and Serbia – and which marches alongside neo-Nazis Laszlo did not respond to FRANCE 24's requests for comment on the matter of his militia.Hungary has continued to harden its policies toward migrants, which are among Europe's harshest. After raising kilometres of barb wire fence along the Serbian border, and drawing routine criticism for police violence against migrants, the country put a new law into action at the start of July, authorising border guards to summarily send asylum-seekers and migrants back into Serbia. Human Rights Watch has noted major abuses against asylum-seekers in Hungary. Of 583 asylum requests in 2015, of which a majority came from Syrians, only 16 people were granted refugee status.