A remark criticising Hungary’s lauded border defence against illegal migration has spurred a national politician to suggest pigs’ heads be placed on the country’s fences could be a more effective deterrent.
Advertisement
Under conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Hungary has taken one of the toughest stances among fellow European Union members against the recent mass influx of migrants and refugees to the bloc, a crisis that has divided the EU.
Last year, Hungary declared a state of emergency and closed is southern border with Serbia amid a wave of about a million refugees who sough to travel from Turkey to Germany and Scandinavia.
However, others joined in the row to condemn the MEP’s comments.
Creepy scarecrows keep migrants away from Hungarian border?
The comments were in response to a Tweet by Andrew Stroehlein, European media director with Human Rights Watch, in which he shared an image of the makeshift scarecrows and linked to an article in the Washington Post detailing the latest tactic materializing on Hungary’s border to deter refugees. “Seems to work, nobody cut through the fence here in four weeks”.
“Refugees are fleeing war and torture, Hungary”, wrote Stroehlein. “Your root vegetable heads will not deter them”, Stroehlein said on Twitter.
“But agree, pig’s head would deter more effectively”. I don’t think it humiliates anyone if I say that the pig’s head is haram, meaning that it is forbidden.
Schopflin replied, “Might do so”.
“An MEP spouting such xenophobic filth”. The politician’s response has stirred an outrage and Stroehlein even called him an “embarrassment to Hungary, to Europe and to humanity”.
Advertisement
Mr. Schopflin, a former BBC employee and London-based professor, later told Reuters that the pig-head idea was “a thought experiment” and not a formal proposal. “It’s anthropologically intriguing how sensitive the topos is”.
