Hungary’s controversial Prime Minister has said refugees arriving in Europe are ‘Muslim invaders’ who have created ‘parallel societies that will never unite’.
Viktor Orban insisted his country had not taken in migrants because Hungarians were not in favour of opening their borders.
The hard-line leader oversaw the construction of an electronic fence along Hungary’s border as a refugee crisis hit Europe in 2015 while the country’s treatment of migrants has been slammed by the UN and human rights groups.
Asked about the country’s reluctance to accept refugees like other European nations, Orban told the German newspaper Bild: ‘I can only speak for the Hungarian people, and they don’t want any migration.’
Hungary’s controversial Prime Minister Viktor Orban (pictured) has said refugees arriving in Europe are ‘Muslim invaders’ who have created ‘parallel societies that will never unite’
He claimed that most refugees were not fleeing to Europe to escape danger, but rather were ‘economic migrants in search of a better life.’
The 54-year-old then said Hungary regarded them instead as ‘Muslim invaders’ and insisted that this will lead to the appearance of ‘parallel societies. Christian and Muslim communities would ‘never unite’, he added.
Hitting out at German Chancellor Angela Merkel for her 2015 open-doors refugee policy, Orban said: ‘The reason why people are in your country is not because they are refugees, but because they want a German life.
‘I’ve never understood how chaos, anarchy and illegal border crossings are viewed as something good in a country like Germany, which we view as the best example of discipline and the rule of law.
Asked to explain why Hungary accepted no refugees while Germany took in hundreds of thousands, Orban told Bild: ‘The difference is, you wanted the migrants, and we didn’t.’
The hard-line leader oversaw the construction of a fence along Hungary’s border as a refugee crisis hit Europe in 2015 (pictured) while the country’s treatment of migrants has been slammed by the UN and human rights groups
Orban has faced a wave of criticism over his controversial stance and once described immigration as a ‘poison’ and the ‘Trojan Horse of terrorism’.
Earlier this month, Orban claimed that the EU’s migration policy had failed as and his Polish counterpart demanded a bigger say in the bloc’s future.
Orban and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki lead conservative governments under fire from Brussels over their refusal to take in migrants under a quota system and over their efforts to tighten state control of their courts and media.
‘In terms of migration and quotas that were to be imposed on (EU) member countries we strongly reject such an approach as it infringes on sovereign decisions of member states,’ Morawiecki told a joint news conference after talks with Orban in Budapest.
Echoing that line, Orban said: ‘The EU’s migration policy… has failed.’
‘We want to have a strong say, as these countries (in Central Europe) have a vision about the future of Europe,’ added the Hungarian leader, who is expected to win a further four years in power in an election due in April.
Orban led criticism in ex-communist central and eastern Europe of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision in 2015 to open Germany’s doors to more than one million, mostly Muslim migrants and refugees fleeing conflicts in Syria, Iraq and beyond.
‘At times we feel as if someone was shooting us in the back for defending the interests of the entire Europe,’ Orban told Poland’s public broadcaster TVP of Hungary’s efforts, which included a barbed-wire fence on its southern border, to stop the flow of migrants through its territory towards western Europe.