Put an end to anti-migrant stance: UN

‘Over 1 million refugees reach Europe in 2015’

The UN’s refugee agency and human rights groups have urged Hungary to end policies that promote “intolerance and hatred” of migrants as Europe struggles to cope with its worst migration crisis since World War II.

In a joint statement, UNHCR, the Council of Europe and the OSCE’s office of human rights on Monday called on Hunga-ry’s leaders to help “those who have been forced out of their countries against their own will and choice and are currently seeking safety in Europe”.

They criticised a public campaign launched by the Hungarian government in December that they said portrayed refugees, most of them coming from war-torn Syria, as “criminals, inva-ders and terrorists based on their religious beliefs and places of origin”.

The campaign has seen full-page messages in national newspapers appear with the headline: “The quota increases the terror threat!” against a black background.

It refers to EU plans to distribute 1,60,000 refugees and migrants across the bloc, with Slovakia and Hungary due to take in around 2,300 people each.

Other messages read: “An illegal immigrant arrives in Europe on average every 12 seconds”; “We don’t know who they are, or what their intentions are” and “We don’t know how many hidden terrorists are among them”.

Hungary’s foreign minister Peter Szijjarto reacted to the criticism saying, “Hungary is talking about reality... It offers, as before, protection to those who really need it, but it cannot welcome tens or hundreds of thousands of economic migrants.”

The UN refugee agency, meanwhile, said on Tue-sday that more than one million migrants and refug-ees reached Europe in 2015, including over 9,70,000 who made the dangerous journey across the Mediterr-anean. The new figures, jointly released by the UNHCR and the Internatio-nal Organisation for Migration, listed migrant arrivals in six European countries since January 1, with the vast majority of people — 8,21,008 — landing in Greece.