BUDAPEST : Human Rights Watch accused Hungary Wednesday of "cruel and violent treatment" of migrants, accusing police and soldiers of beating people up before forcibly expelling them back into Serbia. "Migrants at Hungary's border are being summarily forced back to Serbia, in some cases with cruel and violent treatment, without consideration of their claims for protection," the rights group said on its website.

The new report by the New York-based non-governmental organisation included testimony from interviews it made in April and May with 12 migrants who said they were brutally beaten and abused by officials and then pushed back to Serbia. "I haven't even seen such beating in the movies," said one man cited in the report. "They deliberately gave us bad injuries".

Hungary is "breaking all the rules" and "summarily dismissing claims" by asylum seekers crossing Serbia, said Lydia Gall, a HRW researcher. "People who cross into Hungary without permission, including women and children, have been viciously beaten and forced back across the border," she said.

Around 400,000 migrants and refugees passed through Hungary in 2015 before rightwing Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government sealed off its southern borders with razor wire and fences in the autumn. The authorities also brought in tough new laws punishing illegal entry and vandalism of the fences, that have led to almost 3,000 convictions in fast-track trials, most resulting in expulsion orders.

Orban has said that mass immigration by Muslims threatens Europe's security and its Christian identity, refusing to accept refugees from hotspots such as Syria under an EU quota scheme. Despite the fence, the number of irregular migrants caught by the Hungarian police has been growing each month this year, to a total of around 17,500 as of the end of June.

In response, legislation that took effect earlier this month allows authorities to return any migrant found within eight kilometres (5.0 miles) of the border to "transit zones" located in no-man's land between Hungary and Serbia.

Hungary has restricted however the number of people it allows each day into the transit zones, where asylum claims can be submitted. In recent months hundreds of people, particularly single young men, have been forced to wait in squalid conditions in the strip of land between the Serbian passport control and the Hungarian fence. The government was yet to respond to the HRW report.