Attacking European politicians who he accused of failing to show migrants a sufficiently warm welcome, the United Nations (UN) human rights chief compared the rhetoric of Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to that of Nazi Germany.
Speaking in Geneva on Wednesday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein also slammed “false claims that migrants commit more crimes” and claimed that Europeans welcome mass migration.
“Many ordinary people in Europe have welcomed and supported migrants, but political leaders increasingly demonstrate a chilling indifference to their fate.
“I am particularly disturbed by lurid public narratives which appear deliberately aimed at stirring up public fear and panic, by depicting these vulnerable people as criminal invading hordes,” he told a meeting of the UN human rights council.
The Saudi Arabian prince blasted “increasing calls” by politicians in Europe to work with African nations in an attempt to slow the migrant tide.
“For example, migrants apprehended at sea by the Libyan Coast Guard or similar agencies may be put at risk of further violence”, he said, speaking of efforts by EU nations including Britain to train coastguards in Libya.
Al-Hussein praised “heroic efforts by many actors to save lives at sea”, referring to the ‘save and rescue’ missions in the Mediterranean where migrants are ferried to Europe from within just miles of Libya’s coast.
EU border agency Frontex last month admitted these missions, many of which are carried out by Soros-funded NGOs, increase the number of deaths by drowning and boost the profits of criminal human trafficking gangs.
The UN human rights chief lashed out at Central Europe where politicians have vowed not to follow Western Europe’s lead in importing large numbers of people from the third world. Central Europe’s leaders often point to terror attacks and the existence of criminal, disaffected underclasses in Western Europe following decades of immigration from the Middle East and Africa to the region.
Highlighting a recent speech by Orbán in which the Hungarian prime minister said diversity “causes trouble”, al-Hussein alluded to Nazi Germany.
“No society is homogenous, least of all in Central Europe, and these toxic notions of so-called ethnic purity hark back to an era in which many people suffered atrociously, Hungarians included,” he declared.
Hungary hit back at the Saudi prince, the nation’s Foreign Minister on Wednesday accused the commissioner of “not [having] even bothered to read the prime minister’s speech”.
Péter Szijjártó quoted Orbán as having said: “Hungary is ethnically heterogeneous, but its ethnic diversity remains within a specific range, so this can be considered a form of ethnic homogeneity, civilisational similitude.”
According to the Hungarian Wire Agency, the minister said “while the high commissioner is only capable of bringing up the Holocaust”, “the Hungarian government is getting meaningful things done” by protecting its borders and in turn, Europe.
“So far, no one has been able to clarify ‘what illegal migrants in Turkey, Greece, Macedonia or Serbia are fleeing from’, or why they should be let into Hungary,” Szijjártó said.
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