Hungarian PM Viktor Orban in Romania, slams immigration, West for the Ukraine war. Romania, Ukraine retort

Tokes asks Orban "to support the autonomy efforts of the Szeklerland".

0

Get real time updates directly on you device, subscribe now.

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban attacked the “mixing” of European and non-European races in a speech that immediately sparked outrage from opposition parties and European politicians. Orban made these statements during the annual speech in Băile Tușnad.

“We (Hungarians) are not a mixed race…and we don’t want to become a mixed race,” Orban said on Saturday. He added that countries where Europeans and non-Europeans mix “are no longer nations”.

The Hungarian PM predicted in his speech the decline of the west and prophesying “a decade of danger, insecurity and war”.

The Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, declared on Saturday, at Băile Tuşnad, that among the thorniest problems facing Europe are the demographic crisis, the crisis of spirituality, the power of the West, but also a political crisis. He says that the migration phenomenon has divided Europe into two camps, which are fighting each other, and that the West has moved into Central and Eastern Europe.

At the summer camp in Tușnad, the Hungarian prime minister repeated his positions regarding sexual minorities: “the father is a man, the mother is a woman and our children should be left alone”, including by the “Soros army”.

“The most thorny problem continued to be the demographic problem. There are more funerals than births. (…) The second challenge is the migration phenomenon, which has divided Europe in two. The migration phenomenon divided Europe in two. Quite simply, the West fell apart, it split in two. On the one hand we have countries, nations, where we have Europeans and non-Europeans, living together. Those states are no longer nations, there are conglomerates of peoples. We can no longer speak, I say, of the West, it is about a post-Western structure and, according to the rules of mathematics, that great demographic change will happen. In that part of our continent (…), the percentage of the non-European population will increase to over 50%. And we have the other side of Europe, of the West, Central and Eastern Europe, that is, it is about us. I don’t want to create confusion, but, nevertheless, I say it, in the spiritual sense: the West has moved to our region. Here we have the West, there we have a post-Western structure and there is a battle between the two parts of Europe. So, we made an offer to the post-Westerners, we told them, leave us alone to decide who we want to be neighbors with and who we want to live with“, he stated.

The Hungarian Prime Minister also referred to the “gender ideology”, noting that “this Western madness will not have a majority in this part of the world”. “Our position is very simple here as well. We ask, it’s an offer of tolerance: we don’t want to tell them how to live, we only ask them to accept that with us the father is a man, the mother is a woman and that our children be left alone. And let this be accepted by the Soros army,” he underlined.

Orban also harshly criticized Western military support for Ukraine, positioning himself as Moscow’s first ally within the European Union. “The more modern weapons NATO gives to the Ukrainians, the more the Russians will push the front line forward…What we are doing is prolonging the war,” Orban said during a speech on Saturday.

In his view, the EU needs a new strategy in the war in Ukraine, as the sanctions against Moscoe have not functioned.

“A new strategy is needed that focuses on peace talks and developing a good peace proposal…instead of focusing on winning the war,” the Hungarian prime minister said in his speech at the Băile Tușnad Summer School.

Hungary’s national prime minister, re-elected for a fourth consecutive term in April, has reiterated that Hungary will stay out of the war in neighboring Ukraine. Viktor Orban has repeatedly said that Hungary is unwilling to support EU embargoes or restrictions on Russian gas imports, as this would undermine its economy.

The Hungarian prime minister also said that if Trump was president of the United States, there would be no war in Ukraine.

“The Russians told us their demands: no NATO membership of Ukraine and no long-range weapons reaching its territory. The West did not even want to negotiate about it. This refusal started the war,” said Viktor Orban.

If Trump had been president and Merkel had still been in office, the war in Ukraine would never have broken out,” added the leader of the Budapest government.

At the same time, Viktor Orban dismissed Ukrainians’ determination to keep fighting, saying it was a losing strategy and likening it to sitting in a car with all the wheels broken. “The Ukrainians will never win a war with the support of the Anglo-Saxons,” he said.

At the same time, Viktor Orban also said that at the moment he is looking for allies, because the “post-Westerners” are trying to disrupt the Visegrád Group (made up of the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary), and the war has shaken Polish-Hungarian cooperation.

According to Orban, Western governments have been trying to break up the V4 alliance (a.k.a. the Visegrad group) “for years” and are now using the opportunity provided by the war in Ukraine to do so;  The current political differences in the Visegrad group are “a matter of the soul because, from the point of view of Hungarians, the war is a conflict between two Slavic peoples”, Orban thinks. He also dismissed the positions of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, which he said “are now with the post-Westerners”, comparing the governments in Prague and Bratislava to “a person tying his horse to a burning stable”.

It was also there, in Baile Tusnad , in 2014, that Orban first said he wanted to build an “illiberal democracy” in Hungary.

Romanian FM Bogdan Aurescu retorted that Orban’s statements are unfortunate. “It is regrettable that such ideas are propagated from the territory of Romania”, said the Minister of Foreign Affairs from Bucharest, who wanted to emphasize that Romania does not agree with the Prime Minister’s speech from Budapest”.

“It is regrettable that such ideas are propagated from the territory of Romania, in the complex global context that we all have to face, especially since our official positions are different from these theses. It is clear that we cannot agree with them. I’m not talking about racial statements, which are not acceptable,” the Romanian foreign minister underlined.

Nonetheless, Aurescu noted the fact that, according to a promise he received from his Hungarian counterpart, the dignitaries present at Tușnad did not address sensitive topics for the public opinion in Romania, such as the obtaining of autonomy by the Hungarians from Harghita and Covasna.

Romanian authorities have recently set a condition (justified by the agreement between Romania and Hungary occasioned by the visit to Bucharest on July 12 of the Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs Peter Szijjarto, an agreement whose object is the more intense use by the Hungarian side of the interconnector of gas between the two countries): Hungarian politicians should stop sending messages related to the autonomy of the Szeklerland, the Transylvania problem, etc.

Tokes asks Orban “to support the autonomy efforts of the Szeklerland”

However, the former reformed bishop Laszlo Tokes asked the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Saturday, at Băile Tușnad, to support the autonomy aspirations of the Szeklerland. Tokes says that he will continue to fight for the autonomy of Hungarians and that he will take advantage of the presence of the UDMR in the government to promote this issue.

“We want to ask the Prime Minister (Viktor Orban) to support the autonomy efforts of the Szeklerland in a more effective way than before, knowing that integration without community rights and without autonomy is a fertile ground for assimilation“, he said Laszlo Tokes in the presentation he gave on Saturday, during the 31st edition of the Tuşnad Summer University (“Tusvanyos”), quoted by Hirado.

Laszlo Tokes also said that the criminalization of the institution of autonomy has been a feature of Romanian political life since the beginning of the 90s and quoted former president Ion Iliescu, from a declassified document, who in 1995 told the US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke that approving the request for autonomy would “lead to the Bantustanization of Romania”.

According to Tokes, this vision was also reflected in a statement two years ago by President Klaus Iohannis, when he accused the Social Democrats of “wanting to ensure broad autonomy for the Szeklerland” and “wanting to give Transylvania to the Hungarians” , more precisely, to Viktor Orban.

Incident during Viktor Orban’s speech

During Viktor Orban’s speech in Tusnad, a man displayed a banner in the middle of the crowd with the message “Something is eternal: Transylvania, Romanian land!” – reference to this year’s motto of the Summer University at Băile Tuşnad, which was “Some things are eternal”.

The gesture aroused the displeasure of those around, who tried to cover the poster and booed the protester. In the end, law enforcement removed him from the crowd and removed the man from the area where the event was taking place.

Five people were caught with drugs at the summer camp in Băile Tuşnad

The police identified five people, all from Harghita, who possessed drugs – respectively cannabis and ecstasy – both for their own consumption and to sell them during the festival.

PSD, PNL slam Orban’s statements

On the other hand, Liberals and social democrats in Bucharest have rejected any association with the “anti-European and pro-Russian messages” delivered by Prime Minister Viktor Orban at the Tușnad Baths.

The Secretary General of PSD, Paul Stănescu, states in a press release in retort to Viktor Orban’s speech that Romania “is not a springboard for anti-European and pro-Russian messages, neither by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, nor by members of the Hungarian government.” The message comes after the speech held at the weekend by the Hungarian Prime Minister at Băile Tușnad.

“Romania is not a springboard for anti-European and pro-Russian messages, neither by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, nor by members of the Hungarian government. If they want to criticize the joint actions of the EU and NATO and make predictions related to the aggression to which Ukraine is subjected by Russia, then they should do it from the territory of Hungary, where they are free to say what they want. Within another state, such messages are inappropriate. We do not need them to mix toxically, in the Romanian public space, with our commitments and clear positions in favor of strengthening and supporting the European project. To say that the EU has lost the war is absolutely useless, superficial and unbelievable, especially when you speak from the complicated position of a politically isolated state in the EU,” Stanescu said.

In his turn, PNL spokesperson, Ionut Stroe told HotNews.ro that “it is regrettable” that his speech contains “passages from the Kremlin’s propaganda manual and “it is disturbing that Viktor Orban is sending favorable messages to Vladimir Putin from Romania”.

“The Hungarian prime minister is looking for arguments and theories from the past. It is disturbing that Mr. Orban chose to convey these messages to a public in Romania, to some Romanian citizens, even if of Hungarian ethnicity, trying to create a trend favorable to Vladimir Putin in Romania. Unfortunately, nothing Mr. Orban says resembles the speech of a European leader, everything is against the European spirit. Transylvania is a model of tolerance for the whole of Europe, and the Hungarian prime minister is coming to make, precisely here, statements bordering on racism, which no longer have anything to do with our common values”, said Stroe.

 

Ukrainian FM: Orban’s speech is a classic sample of Russian propaganda

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry reacted to the comments made by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Romania. “It’s a classic example of Russian propaganda,” says Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko.

Orban said, among other things, that the West had made a mistake, that the policy of sanctions and the arming of Ukraine had not worked, and that Russia could not be defeated.

In a message published on Facebook, Oleg Nikolenko wrote: “Sanctions are effective, and they have significantly diminished the ability of the Russian war machine to wage a war against Ukraine. Delivering arms to Ukraine saves Ukrainian lives. If sanctions and arms delivery were ineffective, the Kremlin authorities would not allocate huge resources to stop these measures.”

DONATE: Support our work
In an ever changing and challenging world, the media is constantly struggling to resist. Romania Journal makes no exception. We’ve been informing you, our readers, for almost 10 years, as extensively as we can, but, as we reject any state funding and private advertising is scarce, we need your help to keep on going.
So, if you enjoy our work, you can contribute to endorse the Romania Journal team. Any amount is welcome, no strings attached. Choose to join with one of the following options:
Donate with PayPal
Donate by Bank Wire
Black Zonure SRL
UniCredit Bank. Swift: BACXROBU
RON: RO84 BACX 0000 0022 3589 1000
EURO: RO57 BACX 0000 0022 3589 1001
USD: RO30 BACX 0000 0022 3589 1002

Leave A Reply

Your email address will not be published.