Czech police slammed for ‘branding’ refugees with numbers ‘like concentration camp prisoners’

Czech police have been condemned by human rights activists for writing numbers on the arms of migrants detained on the border.

Officers in the Czech Republic used marker pens on 214 refugees – the majority of whom are from Syria – after they were detained at a train crossing between Austria and Hungary yesterday afteoon.

Human rights activists and lawyers slammed the Czech authorities for the procedure which some compared to the forced branding of Jewish people by the Nazis during World War II.

(Picture: AP)

‘It is simply wrong and foolish," Alp Mehmet of MigrationWatch told MailOnline.

‘They are treating them in a way that could look like they are branding them or doing what happened to the Jews in Nazi Germany.

‘I can understand why people will be repulsed by this type of action. No one is suggesting they won"t be treated well, but the sooner they stop this the better all around."

Andrew Stroehlein, European Media Director of Human Rights Watch, echoed Mr Mehmet"s words and said he was ‘amazed" that people think the Holocaust ‘only holds lessons for Germans and Jews".

(Picture: REUTERS)

Czech interior ministry spokeswoman Lucie Novakova defended the measure as a means to protect increasing numbers of children among the refugees.

‘Our goal is to prevent children from getting lost," she said.

‘We also write the code of the train they have arrived on so that we know which country we should retu them to within the readmission system."