BUDAPEST, Hungary: EU leaders and Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros are seeking a “new, mixed, Muslimized Europe,” Hungary’s anti-migration prime minister said Saturday.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban said during a visit to Romania that Hungary’s border fences, supported by other Central European countries, are the barriers to the EU-Soros effort to increase Muslim migration.
Orban also said that while Hungary opposed taking in migrants “who could change the country’s cultural identity,” he said that under his leadership Hungary would remain a place where “Western European Christians will always be able to find security.”
Orban, who will seek a fourth term as prime minister in April 2018, said Hungary’s opposition parties were no match for his government.
“In the upcoming campaign, first of all we have to confront external powers,” Orban said at a cultural festival in Baile Tusnad, Romania. “We have to stand our ground against the Soros mafia network and the Brussels bureaucrats. And, during the next nine months, we will have to fight against the media they operate.”
Soros has become a key target of Orban and his government. Recent legislation seeks to close or expel the Budapest-based Central European University, founded by Soros in 1991. There are also new rules about non-governmental organizations funded at least partly from abroad. Critics say that the new regulations stigmatize the NGOs, many of which are backed by Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and are meant to delegitimize them.
Orban reiterated his charge that Soros-funded NGOs want to weaken Hungary’s security with their advocacy for asylum-seekers, while Hungary had managed to stop the “migrant invasion” with the fences protected by razor-wire built on the borders of Serbia and Croatia.
A recently ended anti-Soros billboard and poster campaign was criticized by local and international Jewish groups for its anti-Semitic overtones.
Asked about choosing between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Orban initially answered with a joke about a Pole being asked in the communist era to choose between Hitler and Stalin.
“He answered that he chooses Marlene Dietrich,” Orban said with a laugh. “What I want to say with this is that you can’t give a good answer to a bad question.”
Orban first expressed his support for Trump, then a presidential candidate, a year ago at the same event in Romania, while Putin has visited Hungary twice in two years. Hungary is expanding its energy ties with Moscow, including Russia’s construction of new reactors at Hungary’s only nuclear power plant.
Orban said “Hungarian interests” would be the “guiding star” of the country’s foreign policy, not “Trump, Putin or (German Chancellor Angela) Merkel.”
Orban said Hungary’s low birth rate made the country an “endangered species,” and that the government was using taxes on multinational companies in Hungary to fund social policies and spur families to have more children.
Hungary’s leader: Border fences will stop Muslim migration
Hungary’s leader: Border fences will stop Muslim migration
