Former Communist states only want Christian refugees
Central European post-Communist states are rejecting non-Christian asylum-seekers from the Middle East and North Africa, and giving priority - or sole access - to Christian migrant families to preserve their traditionally Christian cultures.
Faced with an unprecedented trans-Mediterranean migrant crisis, EU has committed to settle some 40,000 arrivals into Greece and Italy over two years, urging EU states to accept quotas. But Slovakia, Poland and Hungary - all religiously and culturally predominantly Catholic states - have objected to taking nonChristians.
Slovakia, due to accept 200 people from camps in Greece, Italy and Turkey, has stated it will impose a faith test, and only admit Christian refugees, as “Muslims would not feel at home in Slovakia”.
Slovak Interior Minister Ivan Netik declared: “We want to really help Europe with this migration wave, but we are only a transit country and the people don’t want to stay”. Yet he added: “We could take 800 Muslims but we don’t have any mosques in Slovakia - so how can Muslims be integrated if they don’t like it here?”
Refusing any EU quota, Slovakia has only agreed a voluntary arrangement to receive Christian families. Denying such a policy broke EU non-discrimination rules, Netik said its aim was “to ensure harmony”. However, Slovakia is providing temporary nondiscriminatory asylum for 500 migrants from overflowing Austrian camps.
Poland’s government, facing a public backlash over its decision to take in 2,000 migrants, now says it will accept only 50 families authenticated by a priest as Christian, citing the need to avoid importing potential Islamist terrorists.
However, political and public pressure to preserve Poland’s religious and cultural identity as a Catholic country is the key factor in its restrictive stance.
Hungary has registered 120,000 asylum applications this year - but is now building a four-metre-high barrier along 175 kilometres of border with Serbia to stop the inflow. Under pressure from anti-Islamic far-right parties, Prime Minister Viktor Urban’s government has declared Hungary to be “by faith and culture a Christian country”, so non-Christian mass immigration was unacceptable.
Urban is seen as more widely posing as “protector of European culture” defined in Christian terms.
Even the strongly secular Czech Republic will take in only 1,500 refugees, to be hand-picked as “suitable for integration”. Czech, Polish and Slovak polls show 60 per cent -70 per cent of people backing rejection of refugees from Middle East and North Africa, reflecting hostility to mainly Muslim immigration. Affirmation of national Christian identity after decades of Communist atheism is also part of the equation.
The migrant crisis is also prompting rising anti-EU feeling among post-Communist states, with nationalist politicians arguing Russian control has been replaced by EU directives. However predominantly Orthodox and non-EU Macedonia, has opened its borders especially to women and children migrants.