Foreign Minister Szijjártó on European “no-go zones”

Pro-government columnists side with Foreign Minister Szijjártó, who in successive interviews with the BBC and CNN insisted on the existence of ‘unsafe enclaves’ in several major European cities, allegedly taken over by unintegrated immigrants. A left-wing commentator, on the other hand, thinks that describing districts with higher crime rates as no-go zones is a gross exaggeration.

In an interview with the BBC, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó was asked about a Hungarian government ad leaflet that claims the existence of hundreds of no-go zones ‘taken over’ by migrants in major European cities. Mr Szijjártó said the information was drawn from police and news reports, adding that Hungary wants no such zones. Népszabadság reports that the embassies of the UK, Germany, France and Sweden all lodged complaints with the Hungarian government about the leaflet. 

There are no-go zones in every state, Zoltán Kottász comments in Magyar Idők. The pro-government commentator contends that although no government would ever admit their existence, even in Hungary there are streets and districts with staggering crime rates that are not recommended to visit after dusk. Anyone familiar with Hollywood films knows that gangs rule in the ghettos of New York and Los Angeles, and there are similar districts in European cities as well, Kottász writes. He adds that “the British government has to tackle bearded Muslim youngsters who grab beer from the hands of bypassers and has a hard time with schools in Birmingham which Islamists try to take over”. “All this is common practice in Great Britain,” Kottász remarks. He adds, however, that these incidents related to minorities unwilling to integrate are specific only to minor areas of any country, and thus their implications should not be exaggerated. Kottász goes on to suggest that in order to maintain national sovereignty and public order, governments need to stop the inflow of migrants.

There are problematic districts in European cities, but it is a gross exaggeration to call them no-go zones, Áron Kovács writes in Népszabadság. The left-wing columnist describes the theme of unsafe enclaves ruled by Islamist gangs as a recurrent myth on the populist right. Kovács admits the existence of Sharia courts in Western Europe, but argues that they are not courts of law but bodies of binding arbitration that cannot overrule regular courts. 

In Heti Válasz, Szilárd Szőnyi quotes an interview by Roger Scruton with Mandiner on Wednesday in which the British conservative philosopher spoke about the existence of unsafe zones in the UK dominated by aggressive Muslim gangs. Szőnyi adds that the BBC  has also run its own series of reports on such districts in Britain where Sharia ruled “parallel societies” flourish.

Tags: foreign affairs, migration, Szijjártó, UK