Hungarian regime displays callousness
Re: “Hungary is upholding its obligations to migrants” (Opinion, Sept. 17)
Hungary’s ambassador to Canada, Bálint Ódor, used an article in the Montreal Gazette to try to rally Hungarian Canadians to defend the actions of his government in Budapest. There is no doubt that the unprecedented number of Syrian refugees transiting through Hungary was a serious strain for Hungarian authorities and especially for the charities and activists in Budapest who struggled to provide food, clothing and shelter to men, women and children who found themselves homeless in Hungary’s public parks and train stations.
With almost no help from Hungary’s government, these volunteers usually paid for the food, sandwiches, fresh fruit and supplies donated to the refugees out of their own pockets. The story of a Budapest barber setting up shop in the Keleti train station to give refugees free haircuts is just one of the many acts of compassion in the Hungarian capital.
Ódor’s government displayed a callousness that is especially shameful on the part of a country that 59 years ago flooded the western world with more than 200,000 refugees. Canada accepted 38,000 Hungarian refugees and Canadian authorities waived some of the normal requirements connected with claiming asylum in order to expedite the entry of refugees who had captured the attention and sympathy of Canadian society.
In stark contrast to Canada’s response in 1956, Ódor fails to mention the campaign that his government launched against foreigners this summer. Hundreds of government billboards across the country announced that foreigners were coming to Hungary and would destroy the nation’s culture, engage in criminal activity and steal jobs from Hungarians. The government also mailed out a questionnaire to 8 million adult Hungarians that overtly connected immigration to terrorism, suggesting that allowing in Syrians would increase Hungary’s exposure to a terrorist attack.
Unlike before the fall of the Berlin Wall, when tens of thousands of East Germans fled West, through Hungary, and were met with a benevolent response on the part of Hungarian authorities, Hungary’s response to the current crisis was brash and shameful. Christopher Adam, Ottawa