HUNGARIAN PM CENSURED OVER ANTI-MUSLIM REMARKS
Budapest, 22 Dzulqa’dah 1436/6 September 2015 (MINA) – In a clear message to desperate Syrian refugees, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said his country doesn’t want more Muslim immigrants, warning that the growing Muslim influx is threatening Europe’s Christian roots.
“I think we have a right to decide that we do not want a large number of Muslim people in our country,” Orban told journalists outside the EU headquarters at Brussels, On Islam quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA) as reporting.
“We do not like the consequences,” he said, referring to the country’s 150-year history of Ottoman rule during the 16th and 17th centuries.
The PM’s anti-Muslim remarks came as hundreds of asylum seekers were forced off a train heading to Austria by police.
In the wake of scuffles with security forces, refugees were taken to a refugee camp.
In his opinion piece in Germany’s Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung, the Hungarian PM defended his own country’s construction of a 13ft-high anti-migrant fence.
The razor wire fence, which is stretched over Hungary’s 110-mile border with Serbia, aims to prevent the influx of refugees into the central European country.
“Please don’t come. It’s risky to come. We can’t guarantee that you will be accepted,” Orban said in Brussels, adding that it would not be humane or morally right to falsify people’s dreams.
“We Hungarians are full of fear, people in Europe are full of fear because they see that the European leaders, among them the prime ministers, are not able to control the situation,” he added.
The PM’s remarks came a day after a worldwide outcry over a photo of a three-year-old Syrian toddler lying face down on the beach, after he and his family drowned.
The young boy has reportedly drowned along with his five-year-old brother Galip and their mother, Rihan. Their father, Abdullah Kurdi, survived.
The distressed father said that he no longer wants to continue on to Europe and will take the bodies of his two sons and wife to be buried in home town of Kobani.
“I just want to see my children for the last time and stay forever with them,” Kurdi told the Guardian.
The Hungarian PM’s comments have been vehemently condemned by Christian leaders and European officials.
Orban’s claims that Muslims immigration threatened Europe’s Christian roots were refuted by Bishop Angaelos, the general bishop of the Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom.
“As a Christian I could never justify a policy which only supported ‘our own’,” he told the Christian Today.
“The distinction should be based on people’s need, not their religion.”
A similar condemnation was shared by European Council president Donald Tusk who expressed disagreement with Orban’s understanding of a Christian approach to the crisis.
“Referring to Christianity in a public debate on migration must mean in the first place the readiness to show solidarity and sacrifice,” he said.
Meanwhile, Bishop Angaelos called on governments and agencies to work collaboratively to tackle the growing humanitarian disaster.
“I don’t think we can afford to be tribal at this moment,” he said.
“When talking about accepting people into countries, it should be the ones at the greatest risk.”
Some 350,000 migrants have made the perilous journey to reach Europe’s shores since January this year, according to figures released by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on Tuesday.
The IOM said more than 2,600 migrants had drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean in the same period.
Responding to reiterated calls for hosting Syrian refugees, British Prime Minister David Cameron said that promised to welcome thousands of Syrians living in UN refugee camps.
“Britain will act with its head and its heart providing refuge for those in need while working on a long term solution to the crisis,” Cameron said as he announced plans to dramatically expand UK scheme to resettle over 10 times more refugees in the UK. (T/P006/R03)
Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)
