Billboards that are shown at the demonstration include one from the government’s earlier anti-immigrant campaign saying: “If you come to Hungary you must respect our laws”, and another from the government’s latest “info” campaign showing a young woman saying: “We don’t want illegal immigrants!”, next to text saying: “Hungarian reforms are working.”
Passers-by were also handed flyers with the exact translation of Hungary’s national consultation on immigration, which has been widely criticized as being misleading and portraying immigrants as terrorists. “We are using the same tools the Hungarian government has been using in the past months, partly to intimidate Hungarian citizens and partly to close our country’s southern border,” Hungarian online daily artportal.hu cited the announcement by the group. The group also emphasized that all material they are using is the exact translation of material written by the Hungarian government, without any modifications.
The event took place yesterday, a day prior to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s deadline for completing the temporary wire fence on the Hungarian-Serbian border. The fence is meant to slow the massive influx of refugees arriving in Hungary, but last week saw a record number of arrivals, exceeding 3,000 for two days in a row.
While the Hungarian government says it believes that the temporary measure will work until the European Union as a whole finds a solution to the problem, the international press criticized the fence as being a “pointless PR exercise”, and, at the same time, photo reports around the world have shown refugees crossing the fence and entering the country.
The protest group said they are concerned that “armed violence” will soon erupt in Europe, and “as time passes” there will be “fences in Europe, dividing people based on financial and social differences”, Hungarian online daily hvg.hu reported.
Producing journalism that is worthy of the name is a costly business. For over 30 years, the publishers, editors and reporters of the Budapest Business Journal have striven to bring you business news that works, information that you can trust, that is factual, accurate and presented without fear or favor.Newspaper organizations across the globe have struggled to find a business model that allows them to continue to excel, without compromising their ability to perform. Most recently, some have experimented with the idea of involving their most important stakeholders, their readers.
We would like to offer that same opportunity to our readers. We would like to invite you to help us deliver the quality business journalism you require. Hit our Support the BBJ button and you can choose the how much and how often you send us your contributions.
