Hungary should not forget its past migrant crisis
HUNGARIANS voted in a referendum to support Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s policy of trying to keep migrants from war-torn countries to the east out of Hungary.
The vote in favour was about 92% but the 3.3 million who came to the polls were too few, representing 40% of registered voters; Hungarian law requires a 50% turnout for such a measure to become operative.
Orban’s government has signalled its intent to go ahead anyway, in defiance of the law.
European Union planning anticipates Hungary accepting 1,294 migrants as its part from the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
That is a tiny percentage of Hungary’s 10 million population.
Instead, in addition to the anti-migrant referendum, Orban’s government has posed obstacles to accepting refugees.
The foreign minister of Luxembourg, Jean Asselborn, called for the expulsion of Hungary from the EU, saying that Hungary was treating asylum seekers “worse than wild animals”.
There is a supreme irony of the position of Orban’s government and the vote last week.
In 1956, the world responded quickly and sympathetically when Hungary’s own revolt against the Soviet Union resulted in some 188,000 Hungarians, 2% of the population at the time, fleeing the country.
The United States, as one example, accepted and resettled some 35,000 of them.
Hungarians clearly have a right to express their opinions, including at the ballot box, but migration into Europe from the east and south is a European problem and they have an obligation to play a part in a European solution to it.
EU popularity and leverage are slipping in general, in part because of the United Kingdom’s vote in June to leave.
At the same time, over the 12 years it has been a member of the EU, Hungary has received an estimated US$7.4bil (RM30bil) in development aid, with 95% of public investment in Hungary co-financed by the European Commission.
Hungarians need to recall their own recent history and remember that responsibilities go with benefits. — Pittsburgh PostGazette/Tribune News Service