Soros, Hungarian officials square off over alleged comments on migrants
BUDAPEST (Reuters) – US financier George Soros on Monday denounced a Hungarian government campaign against him as “distortions and lies” designed to create a false external enemy.
The Hungarian-born Soros, 86, is a longtime supporter of liberal values, putting him at odds with right-wing nationalists, in particular the government of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Orban, who faces elections in April 2018, last month sent to voters seven statements attributed to Soros that, among other things, called for the EU to settle a million migrants a year and pay each of them thousands of euros.
“The statements... contain distortions and outright lies that deliberately mislead Hungarians about George Soros’s views on migrants and refugees,” said a statement issued by Soros’s Open Society Foundations.
“With Hungary’s health care and education systems in distress and corruption rife, the current government has sought to create an outside enemy to distract citizens. The government selected George Soros for this purpose,” it said.
It said each of the seven statements was a distortion or lie, refuting them one by one. It said Soros proposed admitting an annual 300,000 refugees to the EU only, while strengthening European border controls and making migrant relocations within the bloc voluntary, not mandatory.
It said Soros proposed no payments to migrants, rather EU subsidies to member-states to help them cope with migration.
A top ruling party politician said on Monday that Hungary was facing a frontal assault from Soros, who is attacking the country via his non-government organizations and EU bureaucrats.
Fidesz Party vice chairman Gergely Gulyas said Soros’s claims that the Hungarian government lied in its campaign against him were “not substantial,” adding that the billionaire and the European Union were pushing the same pro-migrant agenda.
Gulyas rejected charges by Soros that the government’s campaign stoked anti-Muslim sentiment and employed antisemitic tropes.
To three other proposals attributed to Soros – that he wanted milder criminal sentences for migrants; to push national cultures and languages into the background to facilitate easier integration of migrants; and sanctions against countries that oppose migration – the Open Society statement said: “Nowhere has Soros made any such statement(s). This is a lie.”
The election campaign of Orban’s Fidesz Party has built on a series of billboards warning Hungarians, “Don’t let Soros have the last laugh” and showing a laughing Soros, who is Jewish, in black and white. Some had “stinking Jew” scrawled on them.
The billboards, along with calls from Orban to preserve Hungary’s “ethnic homogeneity” and his endorsement of a World War II Hungarian leader who allied with Nazi Germany, drew accusations of antisemitism earlier this year.
Alluding to the billboards and the rejection of mostly Muslim immigration, the Open Society Foundations accused Budapest of “stoking anti-Muslim sentiment and employing antisemitic tropes reminiscent of the 1930s.”
Fidesz pulled the billboard campaign just before a July visit to Budapest by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The government has denied its campaign was antisemitic, and re-launched the billboards in autumn, promoting a “national consultation” with voters.