Bowls of hot goulash, offers of accommodation or just a word of consolation: Hungarians rushed to the border with Ukraine over the weekend to offer support to refugees forced to flee their homes by the Russian invasion.
Even the populist Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, known for his anti-immigration policies, went to the border and relaxed the country’s very strict asylum rules.
It is a “moral duty,” said Janos Molnar, who is waiting at a border crossing in Tizabeks with a banner in Ukrainian stating that he is offering accommodation “to those people who lived through hell.”
“I have three empty rooms in my house,” he explains.
The 50-year-old did not have to wait long. It will host a group of Ukrainians who arrived in Hungary from the eastern part of the country.
“The journey was horrible,” said Jacob Sonder Sirgba, who arrived in Hungary from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, where clashes are raging.
“We will go to any country that is willing to receive us,” added the 39-year-old Nigerian on behalf of his Ukrainian wife and one-year-old daughter.
“Humanity”
According to police figures, more than 70,000 people have entered Hungary since the start of the Russian invasion on Thursday.
The Hungarians mobilized very quickly, as did humanitarian organizations and the authorities of the border towns.
Zoltan Hayashi is a courier who founded the Budapest Bike Maffia.
“We appealed for donations,” explains the 46-year-old. Within a few hours thousands of Hungarians brought canned food, basic necessities, mattresses. “They really wanted to help and they did not just send money.”
He and a colleague loaded them into a van and headed for Zahoni, one of the main points from which Ukrainian refugees enter Hungary.
The truck is driven by Attila Azzodi, a 44-year-old businessman, who immediately offered his services when he saw the ad on the internet.
“We have to show humanity, this war reminds us that we can all become refugees overnight,” he said.
The mayor of the city participates in the collective efforts: he turned the cultural center of Zahoni into a makeshift refugee camp by installing 300 beds there.
A friend in Hungary
This mobilization is reminiscent of the help offered by the Hungarians to the refugees from the Middle East and Africa who arrived in their country in 2015.
Some of the refugees were trapped at a train station in Budapest and survived only thanks to the help of humanitarian organizations.
At the time, Viktor Orban had erected barbed wire on his country’s borders with Serbia and Croatia to prevent refugees from entering.
This time, however, he opened the doors of his country, expressing his “unity” with Brussels, with which he has come into conflict over immigration.
His government has agreed to offer temporary protection to newcomers, taking a completely different approach to Ukrainians than other refugees who have to apply for asylum in “transit areas”.
“Everyone who leaves Ukraine will find a friend in Hungary,” Orban vowed.
SOURCE: AMPE
Source: Capital
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