Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Hungarian Refugee Stance Validated Within EU

"There is a shift to the extreme right because the left, or what is left of the left, and the moderate center right were offering answers that were wrong."
Istvan Gyarmati, (retired) Hungarian ambassador

"Whenever Hungary made an argument, the response was always: 'They are stupid Hungarians. They are xenophobes and Nazis'. Suddenly it turns out that what we said was true."
"The naivete of Europe is really quite stunning."
Zoltan Kovacs, Hungarian government spokesman

"I am surprised and shocked. We will discuss this decision with our Hungarian colleagues.
"Building walls is not the solution. Serbia can't be responsible for the situation created by the migrants, we are just a transit country. Is Serbia responsible for the crisis in Syria?" 
Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, June 2015

"It is more and more obvious that what we kept on saying for the last six months turned out to be right. This is acknowledged more and more: Some say it openly, some say it behind closed doors and some don’t say it but act accordingly."
Peter Szijjarto, Hungary’s foreign minister, December 2015
Migrants in Roszke, Hungary, in September. In often harsh terms, Mr. Orban has pushed Europe to seal its outer borders. Credit Marko Djurica/Reuters
Suddenly the unthinkable, that of turning back refugees, closing borders, spurning the opportunity to rescue the oppressed and war-weary is no longer denied throughout Europe. The unstoppable flood of refugees and migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Eritrea and all points of the African-Middle East compass, including the Palestinians, has finally convinced Europe that it cannot be all things to all seekers.

The obvious requirement to safeguard European heritage, culture, values with the inundation of opposing values supported by a religion that is indeed all things to all its faithful, rejecting national mores, laws and politics of non-Muslim countries has sparked the debate that Hungary's Viktor Orban rudely initiated. At the conclusion of the EU summit meeting in Brussels, Mr. Orban stated: "it has taken us a long time" yet finally "an absolute consensus among the prime ministers on the issue of protection and control of the external borders" has arisen.

"Actually", he remarked jauntily, "it was Hungary’s point of view since the beginning that we should start here." European leaders originally repelled by what they interpreted as hate-mongering on Mr. Orban's positions, now find common consensus with him on many of the points he had raised in the swirling debate around migrants and asylum seekers. The fact that at least one and perhaps more terrorists had infiltrated Europe among asylum seekers and were involved in the Paris attacks that killed 130 was part of the debate.

Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, spoke of German Chancellor Merkel's open-armed welcome of migrants as "dangerous", and in the end endorsed the view that Mr. Orban promoted which was that most seeking haven posing as refugees were economic migrants looking for employment where their countries of origin had nothing to offer them for their aspiring futures. Other European Union leaders have begun to share points that Mr. Orban made when he was reviled for his attitude toward refugees.

They don't share Mr. Orban's characterization of a Muslim invasion, nor his view that the invasion represented a plot by George Soros to cause EU destabilization but Hungary is by no means the only European country erecting a border fence to protect itself from an invasion of migrants seeking shares in Europe's future. Hungary may have distinguished itself by being the first country to erect a border but it is now by no means the only one, and even open-armed Sweden is considering how it will reform its open borders.



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