Orbán: ‘Exporting democracy is madness’

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The idea of using “our own democracy to bring happiness to people from different cultural backgrounds has failed”, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said today, calling the practice the “export of democracy”, according to reports.

Hungaryʼs Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in the studio of Kossuth radio this morning. (Photo: MTI/Szilárd Koszticsák)

During his regular biweekly interview on state-owned Kossuth radio, Orbán said in relation to the refugee crisis that the Libyan government needs full support, because without appropriately arming the Libyan army “there will be no one to keep order” in the country, Hungarian online daily origo.hu reported. “We need to cooperate with them, so they can defend their shores”, Orbán said, adding that another option is the establishment of refugee camps on Libyaʼs shores, the maintenance of which should be aided by Europe. 

The prime minister’s comments follow his two-day official visit to Egypt. Orbán praised Egypt for having a “unified army that supports the president”. He stressed that Europe needs to rethink its foreign policy. “We interfered in Iraq, Syria and Libya, and all our interference ended in catastrophe,” Orbán said, according to origo.hu.

We should live by Muslims, not with them

Orbán acknowledged the existence of different cultures in the world, but said their existence gives “no reason to clash” with them. He stressed that “if we have goodwill and good intentions, we can live next to the Muslim world in peace”. He said he believes Muslims would be happy with this solution, and that such measures should be based on mutual respect.

“Islam is a high civilization, a high culture; the migrant flow and violence that we see does not represent Muslim culture,” he said, according to the Hungarian portal. “If Europe means well it should do everything in its power to make Egypt stable, unless the migrant flow grows threefold,” an Egyptian imam told Orbán, to which the prime minister agreed.

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