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Hungarian foreign minister Péter Szijjártó had to chide BBC anchor Emily Maitlis
for “unbalanced, one-sided” journalism after she threw a hissy fit and
launched into a rant about the EU standing for “tolerance, diversity,
and human rights.”
Breitbart (h/t Marvin W) Speaking to Szijjártó on the publicly-funded broadcaster’s flagship BBC Newsnightprogramme, Maitlis took umbrage
with the Hungarian statesman’s claim that “the current migration policy
of the European Union can be very easily translated as an invitation”
to illegal migrants.
“On World Refugee Day this week, you
passed a new law which makes it illegal to help migrants. It
criminalizes helping illegal aliens, and that includes asylum seekers.
Why would you do that?” she asked.
Szijjártó attempted to correct the
presenter, saying that the anti-illegal immigration package — dubbed
‘Stop Soros’ — was aimed only at those organisations which “help people
to ask for asylum even if they have no legal basis for that… and
promoting [immigration] opportunities with no legal basis”.
Szijjártó explained that illegal
Muslim migration into Hungary — which was running at 3,000 a day at the
height of the migrant crisis, as Maitlis herself reported
at the time — has only been brought under control because of the tough
stance adopted by the Hungarian government, and that the country remains
on the frontline as the situation in the Balkans looks set to boil over again.
Maitlis obviously loses patience and
says: “When you look at Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s words… he’s talked
of Christian Hungary and a mixed population with no sense of identity,
and he’s called the people coming in potential terrorists, so this isn’t
actually about immigration, is it? It’s about xenophobia,” she
asserted.
“No, I have to reject that, and I take
it as an insult,” Szijjártó answered firmly. “We Hungarians, we do have
the right to make our own decision [about] whom we would like to allow
to enter the territory of Hungary, and who we do not allow,” he said,
fighting through the BBC presenter’s attempts to interrupt him with
further questions.
Maitlis responded to the Hungarian foreign minister’s suggestion that the Hungarian voters — who re-elected his government in a super-majority landslide
earlier in the year — should be respected, prompting her to quote
opposition politicians who claim the country “is no longer a democracy,
it is a creeping authoritarianism”.
Szijjártó then took his glaring
interviewer to task: “You are unbalanced. You are one-sided. You look
only at the opinion of those who are frustrated because they lost
elections,” he said, fighting through more interruptions.
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