Hungary PM says Germany Christmas market assault linked to immigration insurance policies
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Saturday drew a direct hyperlink between immigration and an assault in Germany the place a person drove right into a Christmas market teeming with vacation customers, killing not less than 5 folks and injuring 200 others.
Throughout a uncommon look earlier than impartial media in Budapest, Orban expressed his sympathy to the households of the victims of what he referred to as the “terrorist act” on Friday night time within the metropolis of Magdeburg. However the long-serving Hungarian chief, one of many European Union’s most vocal critics, additionally implied that the 27-nation bloc’s migration insurance policies had been accountable.
German authorities stated the suspect, a 50-year-old Saudi physician, is beneath investigation. He has lived in Germany since 2006, training medication. Describing himself as a former Muslim, the suspect shared dozens of tweets and retweets every day specializing in anti-Islam themes, criticizing the faith and congratulating Muslims who left the religion.
Orban claimed with out proof that such assaults solely started to happen in Europe after 2015, when lots of of hundreds of migrants and refugees entered the EU after largely fleeing struggle and violence within the Center East and Africa.
Europe has actually seen quite a few militant assaults going again many years together with practice bombings in Madrid, Spain, in 2004 and assaults on central London in 2005.
Nonetheless, the nationalist chief declared that “there isn’t any doubt that there’s a hyperlink” between migration and terrorism, and claimed that the EU management “desires Magdeburg to occur to Hungary too.”
Orban’s anti-immigrant authorities has taken a tough line on folks coming into Hungary since 2015, and has constructed fences protected by razor wire on Hungary’s southern borders with Serbia and Croatia.
In June, the European Court docket of Justice ordered Hungary to pay a tremendous of 200 million euros ($216 million) for persistently breaking the bloc’s asylum guidelines, and a further 1 million euros per day till it brings its insurance policies into line with EU regulation.
Orban, a right-wing populist who’s constantly at odds with the EU, has earlier vowed that Hungary wouldn’t change its migration and asylum insurance policies no matter any rulings from the EU’s high court docket.
On Saturday, he promised that his authorities will combat again in opposition to what he referred to as EU efforts to “impose” immigration insurance policies on Hungary.
