Critics slam Hungarian PM’s speech bemoaning Europe’s ‘mixing of races’

The Mazsihisz largest Jewish organisation in Hungary has requested a meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to discuss his remarks, while politicians both at home and abroad slammed it for its racist overtones.

The Hungarian prime minister’s controversial speech at the weekend about the mixing of races in Europe continues to cause waves, but he may have been speaking to a more receptive audience in the US, according to Balkan Insight.

After a two-year hiatus in his annual speech to the Balvanyos Summer Free University and Student Camp in the spa town of Baile Tusnad in Romania, where in the past the Hungarian premier has floated new policies and ideological themes, Orban let rip against European nations that are increasingly made up of people of “mixed-race” and a European Commission that “wants to force migrants on us”.

“Migration has split Europe in two – or I could say that it has split the West in two. One half is a world where European and non-European peoples live together. These countries are no longer nations: they are nothing more than a conglomeration of peoples,” the prime minister said.

These remarks drew sharp condemnation from across the political and religious spectrums.

Ferenc Gyurcsany, a former Hungarian prime minister, also condemned Orban’s words.

“Orban is the tragedy of Hungary,” he wrote on Facebook.