Story highlights
The camerawoman worked for Hungary's nationalist N1TV news station
Her behavior "was completely unacceptable," and she has been fired
The video defies explanation. A Hungarian camerawoman, documenting the wave of desperate migrants sprinting from a holding camp, sees a man running with a child in his arms. So she trips him.
The man, carrying all his belongings, falls on top of the boy as they tumble to the ground. He screams in disbelief.
Moments later, the same camerawoman kicks other migrants as they run, including a young girl in the leg.
The videographer, who worked for the Hungarian nationalist N1TV station, has been fired, Editor-in-Chief Szabolcs Kisberk said.
“The camera operator behavior was completely unacceptable,” N1TV said in a statement.
The station did not identify the camerawoman, but thousands took to a Facebook “shame wall” to criticize her acts.
The woman is being investigated on suspicion of committing a public nuisance offense, a spokesman for the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Szeged told CNN on Thursday. Prosecutors are also considering whether to investigate her on more serious offenses, the spokesman said.
The camerawoman was one of the videographers filming the flood of migrants trying to get through Hungary on the way to Austria and Germany. The migrants include refugees trying to escape the carnage brought on by terrorists and war in their homelands.
After crossing from Serbia into Hungary with only the belongings they could carry, the migrants were stuck for days at a holding camp in southern Hungary. Many complained about uncomfortable or inhumane conditions in the camp.
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After breaking through the holding camp’s police line Tuesday, they scrambled across a field, walked and hiked about 4 miles – many dropping their possessions on the ground.
Two children from one family lost the shoes they were wearing. They walked barefoot over a train track and rocks for miles, hoping to reach a country more welcoming of refugees.
Hungary, a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention aimed at protecting refugees, has come under criticism for its handling of migrants and for erecting a razor-wire fence to stymie the flow.
But the Hungarian government has said it is just trying to enforce European Union rules on the movement of migrants without proper documentation.
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CNN’s Lindsay Isaac, Arwa Damon at the Hungarian-Serbian border and Brian Walker in Atlanta contributed to this report.