![]() ![]() embassy in Budapest issued a statement in which it did not mention Orban, but said it condemned “all ideologies, policies, and rhetoric that give oxygen to the doctrines of hate and division.”Įarlier this week, European Commission vice president Frans Timmermans said on Twitter “poisonous” racism had no place in Europe that drew its strength from diversity.Īt home, Jewish groups raised alarm on Monday, calling for a meeting with Orban, on Tuesday one of his aides Zsuzsa Hegedus resigned, calling his speech “a pure Nazi text”, and on Thursday more than 60 members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences issued a petition criticizing his “race mixing” remarks.ĭuring the news briefing, Orban echoed his open letter to Hegedus, saying his government had “zero tolerance” for racism and anti-semitism.īut Budapest’s chief rabbi Zoltan Radnoti told Reuters any communication “talking about races, pure races, and mixing of races” was unacceptable. “It was very important for me to make clear that we in Austria utterly reject any trivialising of racism or even anti-Semitism.” Nehammer earlier said the two discussed the speech, adding: “It happens sometimes that I say something in a way that can be misunderstood but …the position I stand for, is a cultural, civilisation (based) stance.” “This is not a race issue for us, this is a cultural issue,” he said. “I am the only politician in the EU who stands for an openly anti-immigration policy,” Orban told a joint news briefing with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer in Vienna. Orban has spoken about maintaining “ethnic homogeneity” in Hungary before, taking a hard line on immigration since 2015.īut his comments in Romania on Saturday, when he said that in contrast to Western Europe’s “mixed-race world” where people mixed with arriving non-Europeans, Hungary was not a mixed race country – hit a nerve, drawing condemnation from the United States, the European Union, Jewish groups and academics. BUDAPEST/VIENNA (Reuters) – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban stuck to his anti-immigration stance on Thursday but insisted it was not rooted in racism after his recent remarks that Hungarians did not want to become “peoples of mixed race” drew fire at home and abroad. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |