Hungary set to turn away refugees and close main refugee camp

Szabolcs Takács, the deputy Minister of State for European Affairs, who some of our readers will recall from last fall–when a few of us asked him questions during his talk at Ottawa’s Carleton University–gave an interview to Italy’s La Stampa paper, entitled: “Enough of the immigrants! Hungary will lead the front against EU quotas.” Mr. Takács underlined that Hungary plans to play a leadership role in rallying Eastern European member states of the EU (notably the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and the Baltic states), in building a coalition against proposals from Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, that would allow for 20,000 refugees and migrants to settle in the EU legally over the next two years, at a cost of €50 million. Hungary would only have to take in 307 refugees, based on these plans, which surely implies little more than a symbolic participation in this EU-wide strategy. Yet the Orbán government is not one to support goodwill gestures.

According to Mr. Takács, the “solution” would be to address the reasons for out-migration in the countries of origin, rather than to open the gates to people fleeing violence, oppression or abject poverty. In other words, the EU–according to the Hungarian junior minister–has no international humanitarian role to play.

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán went a few steps further. In a press conference organized in Debrecen on Monday, he noted that those arriving in Hungary “are not refugees, but rather migrants. They are not arriving because they are forced to leave, but simply in the hopes of a better life for themselves.”  The liberal website 444.hu remarked that this is, apparently, how. Mr. Orbán also sees the four million people who have fled civil war in Syria.

The Debrecen refugee camp. Photo: Zsolt Czeglédi/MTI.

The Debrecen refugee camp. Photo: Zsolt Czeglédi/MTI.

Mr. Orbán spoke with the mayor of Debrecen, which is also home to the country’s main refugee camp, who asked for the Hungarian leader to confirm that the camp would not be further developed or expanded. Mr. Orbán confirmed that his government would seek to close the camp.

“What Hungary wants, is for no more of them to come, and for those of them who are here to go home,” declared Mr. Orbán in Debrecen. The camp in question has thus far accommodated a total of 35,000 refugees over the years, starting with thousands of Kosovar Albanians displaced by the  war with Serbia in 1999, and then over 8,000 refugees from Afghanistan in 2001. The camp has also housed refugees from Iraq, followed by Roma arrivals from Kosovo in 2007/08. As Népszabadság noted, Fidesz has actually been more extreme in how it views the camp than Jobbik. Lajos Kósa, the former Fidesz mayor of Debrecen, had long used the camp as an opportunity for populist rhetoric during political campaigns in the city.

In the first quarter of 2014, a total of 33,542 people have asked for refugee status in Hungary, although most see this merely as a transit country, and hope to move on to western Europe.

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