We need the UN to help with refugees, Hungary can’t cope
The refugee situation on the hungarian frontier is deeply distressing but hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is right when he says that his country can’t cope with a flood of Muslim migrants. As a teacher, I have lived and worked in hungary. It’s a small, insecure nation struggling with social and economic problems. Unemployment is high, poverty rife and the welfare safety net all too often woefully inadequate. A cobbler I knew lost his job and, unable to pay his rent, was obliged to spend the winter living in the public toilet in the local railway station. Many hungarians have to do two jobs to make ends meet, or seek work abroad. Moreover, having been so frequently oppressed, hungarians are almost paranoid in their determination to preserve their unique language and culture. A vast influx of aliens could cause patriotic feelings of foreign invasion, with unforeseeable results. Democracy is not yet firmly rooted in hungary. In the Thirties, the country was still feudal, ruled by an oppressive Right-wing dictatorship. Nazi and Russian conquest followed — hardly a good seed bed for democracy to flourish. Authoritarianism is still rife and the neo-Nazi party, Jobbik, commands more than 20 per cent of the vote. Fear of Islam is widespread, fuelled by the horrors of IS. Mass Islamic immigration would almost certainly see a neo-Nazi government elected in hungary and the demise of any hopes of an evolving liberal democracy. The situation in Serbia is similar. On a recent visit, I was alarmed to find many people saying that the former military leader Ratko Mladic was a ‘hero’ and that the Srebrenica massacre had been ‘necessary’. (‘IS proves how right he was,’ they said.) As a supporter of the EU, I feel frustrated fury at the crass and culpable incompetence of the eurocrats who have allowed this situation to develop. It could lead to the collapse of the EU and the needless death of many more desperate people. The plight of the refugees and migrants is a task for the UN, not for struggling, problem-filled east european nations. It’s a world problem, not just a european one.