Dealing with an influx of refugees is a highly sensitive issue. As such, it’s probably best not to drag 200 off a train bound for Germany, arrest them and then mark their forearms with identification numbers.
Yet that’s what Czech police started doing on Tuesday morning, according to local media, detaining refugees on train inbound from Austria and Hungary in the Czech region of Moravia.
Amid concern from the Czech government, police made the arrests despite the passengers having valid tickets to travel.
The refugees are currently in being held in police premises in several Moravian towns, however it's the pictures of guards branding women and children with pens, an echo of the region’s brutal Nazi past, that will cause disquiet around the world.
The governor of southern Moravia, Michal Hasek, told the Zpravy newspaper the actions were in preparation should the “wave of migrants increase.”