Orbán’s hate campaign bears fruit — Hungarian reporter brutally assaults Syrian children

Hungary’s Fidesz government has managed to almost completely desensitize its right-wing supporters and much of Hungarian society to the plight of hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees from Syria, thanks to the overtly xenophobic billboard campaign that it ran for weeks before the acute phase of the refugee crisis. This week, a female camerawoman for the N1 TV online news channel — which is closely affiliated with the Jobbik party– repeatedly kicked a Syrian child who was trying to break free from Hungarian authorities at the Röszke refugee transit point, and she also tripped several others, who fell to the ground, after being assaulted. The reporter is called Petra László and she was accompanied by another N1 TV reporter called Henrietta Perge. She also calls for police to use water canons against the Syrian children. The disturbing incident was discovered by a reporter from Germany’s RTL television network, Stephan Richter, and shared on Twitter.

It would appear that the incident was so disturbing that it even compelled the far-right N1 TV to fire Ms. László. The station said that “Ms. László’s behaviour was unacceptable.”  The small Dialogue for Hungary (Párbeszéd Magyarországért – PM) green party has filed a police report against Ms. László for incitement, noting that what she did “represented the very pits of human behaviour.” If convicted, Ms. László faces one to five years in prison. This, however, is highly unlikely, considering the fact that Hungary does not have a judiciary and a criminal system that is even marginally independent of the ruling Fidesz party. And it was precisely the politics of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s governing party that deliberately and systematically augmented xenophobia and prejudice in Hungarian society against the refugees to a fever pitch.

Meanwhile, the European Commission is proposing that Hungary accept 54,000 Syrian refugees this year. Greece, Hungary and Italy would be asked to divide some 120,000 refugees currently within the EU amongst themselves, while Germany is expected to absorb up to 800,000 by December. It is expected that the Hungarian government will continue to fight tooth and nail against any such quotas and will aim to find allies within the EU, especially within the Visegrád 4 group, comprising Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia.

Only a small minority within Hungarian society seems at all moved by the tragic plight of the refugees and Mr. Orbán, shrewdly calculating as he has always been, knows this perfectly well. Ethical considerations and humanism never trump crass political considerations among Hungary’s “Christian” conservatives. And after months of government-sanctioned hate, the refugees have become almost completely dehumanized in the eyes of millions of Hungarians.

A Syrian child sleeping out in the open, at Röszke, one of the main refugee transit points in Hungary. Photo: NL Café.

A Syrian child sleeping out in the open, at Röszke, one of the main refugee transit points in Hungary. Photo: NL Café.

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