The situation of the people who left Hungary after 1956 is not comparable with the current mass migration, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó stressed at his meeting with Jan Eliasson, UN Deputy Secretary-General held on Thursday.
“We must not allow any comparison to be drawn between the situation of the people who left Hungary in the nineteen-fifties due to the communist dictatorship and the current mass migration”, the Minister told the Hungarian News Agency MTI after the meeting.
“The fact is that the Hungarian people who left their country after 1956 were peaceful, cooperated with the authorities of foreign countries, respected the laws of other countries, and did not attack the law enforcement agencies of other countries. What we are observing today is that the current flood of mass migration is combined with a significant amount of aggression, and a considerable percentage of migrants do not respect the laws of other countries, have no respect for the laws of Europe”, he added.
Mr Szijjártó stressed: the two situations are not comparable, and any attempt to claim the contrary must be firmly refused.
The Minister takes the view: the parties agreed that the issue of the flood of immigration is a global challenge, and it therefore calls for a global response. The resolution of this problem cannot be left to Europe alone. Additionally, the processes which are taking place around the world – increasingly scarce access to water, climate change and drawn-out military conflicts – appear to indicate that the mass migration of people will remain a long-term problem, Mr Szijjártó emphasised.