Hungary's Muslims fear migrant referendum

Hungary's Muslims fear migrant referendum
By Euronews
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In Sunday’s referendum Hungarians will be asked whether they agree to the EU dictating how many migrants they must take in.

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In Sunday’s referendum Hungarians will be asked whether they agree to the EU dictating how many migrants they must take in.

The government bias is pretty clear – one billboard reads “did you know that the Paris terror attacks were carried out by migrants?

Hungary border police are beating asylum-seekers, including children. Sickening.

New evidence from AmnestyOnline</a> <a href="https://t.co/irYKgxO3Ad">https://t.co/irYKgxO3Ad</a> <a href="https://t.co/ZSMR3x1xcZ">pic.twitter.com/ZSMR3x1xcZ</a></p>&mdash; Andrew Stroehlein (astroehlein) September 27, 2016

It’s made Hungarian Muslims jumpy but one imam at a mosque in Budapest has reacted by opening up to outsiders.

“We could say that this campaign is against the migrants but in reality it is covertly against Islam, that’s how people mostly understood it. Since a large percentage of the migrants are Muslims, indirectly it is against Islam. Muslims in Hungary have felt the disadvantages of this.”

After Prime Minister Viktor Orban recently commented that Muslim asylum seekers would destroy Hungarian Christian identity and culture many Muslims are, unsurprisingly, feeling rejected.

“I’m starting to feel that my own homeland is repudiating me. I consider myself a good Hungarian and I want to be one, too, but if people are surrounded by this kind of propaganda and they are so impressionable, it often makes you wonder,” one Muslim woman said.

In 2015 European Council had called on Hungary to take in around 1,300 asylum seekers of the 160,000 it wanted re-settled in the EU.

The latest census in 2011 found that 5,600 Hungarians are Muslims.

Hungary holds a referendum of EU mandatory migration quotas on Sunday, with the No vote leading in the polls. pic.twitter.com/ek8JVXPX81

— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) September 29, 2016

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