Leftist opposition parties condemn government handling of migrant crisis

Budapest, September 19 (MTI) – The government has caused chaos with its handling of the migrant crisis, and has completely embarrassed Hungary on the international stage, the Socialist Party said on Saturday.

Board leader Laszlo Botka argued that while the government had depicted migrants at the Roszke border station on Wednesday as brutal aggressors, those same migrants were taken to the Austrian border a few days later.

Party leader Jozsef Tobias called on Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto to stop his “diplomatic rampage”. He also asked President Janos Ader to call a meeting of the parliamentary parties to discuss the role of the army in the crisis.

The leftist Democratic Coalition (DK) party said it would turn to the OSCE over alleged police violence against reporters during the Wednesday clashes between police and groups of migrants on the Hungary-Serbia border.

“The government originally said they [the reporters] were in the wrong place, and today both the government and the police are denying everything,” DK board member Gyorgy Kakuk said, adding that such an incident could not have occurred in any other EU member state.

Kakuk said there was sufficient video evidence to prove that the migrants started crossing the border “peacefully” only after police had let them.

The reporters were there to film migrants crossing the border and had no idea that police would attack innocent civilians without warning, Kakuk said.

MEP Csaba Molnar said the government’s new rules force policemen to break the law by not letting them apprehend migrants crossing the Croatian-Hungarian border. He said that by transporting thousands of migrants from the Croatian to the Austrian border instead of prosecuting them, authorities have violated the Orban government’s “meaningless and inhumane” laws.

DK called on Lajos Kosa, the head of parliament’s defence committee, to convene a special session of the committee because the defence ministry’s “Operation Decisive Action 2015”, the calling up of volunteer military reservists and the construction of the border fence endanger military readiness. Agnes Vadai said that by calling up reservists, the defence ministry has admitted that it does not have enough soldiers.

The green LMP party announced on Saturday that it had put together a package of proposals for managing the migrant crisis. Board member Istvan Ferenczi said the primary obstacle to solving the crisis is a lack of information and communication. Among the proposals is the launch of an EU campaign to inform migrants about European asylum laws, in their native languages, before they cross the border.

Szilard Nemeth, the deputy group leader of the ruling Fidesz party, said that left-wing politicians, especially Ferenc Gyurcsany, continually denied the migration crisis while inciting Hungarian soldiers and police.

Nemeth told a news conference that the former prime minister, “who fired rubber bullets into a peaceful crowd” in 2006 now called those who “attacked the Hungarian border in an organised, armed and controlled manner” people peacefully celebrating.

The Fidesz politician said that Gyurcsany had “threatened” police and soldiers protecting the border by telling them not to carry out “inhumane” commands. “This is called incitement,” Nemeth, who is the deputy chairman of parliament’s national security committee, said.