Europe’s rejection of current war refugees seen as ironic

SIXTY years ago, Soviet tanks crushed an anti-communist uprising in Budapest, sending 200 000 Hungarians fleeing into Austrian refugee camps, then onwards into a welcoming Western world.

Today, memories of that welcome brim with irony in a land that spurns a new generation of refugees fleeing fighting, abandoning their homes, as Hungarians themselves did before them.

Refugees are moved quickly from Hungarian soil to Austria, many landing in Traiskirchen, a small town south of Vienna where thousands of Hungarians once found refuge.

Austrians who observed both migrant crises suggest this historical coincidence is where similarities end.

Such comments chime with those of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, an early opponent of the largest migration wave Europe has seen since World War II, who told Europe to close its borders and sealed Hungary’s own southern frontier with a razor-wire fence.

Marta Pardavi, co-chairperson of rights group the Helsinki Committee, said the Hungarian crisis in 1956 was the first real test of the Geneva Convention on refugees, but the same rules hold today: “Arguments about cultural or religious differences between today’s refugees and Hungarians in 1956 are nothing short of racist.”

Many European countries now have political parties drawing on discontent over immigration. Last year saw 1 million migrants arrive in Germany.

The government and some former refugees dismiss parallels between today’s migrants and Hungarians fleeing across the East-West divide. – Reuters