Slovak Prime Minister raises anti-migrant rhetoric

(Vatican Radio) Slovakia’s prime minister says Slovakia will fight against immigration from Muslim countries - to prevent, he says, attacks similar to the recent deadly shootings in Paris and assaults on women in Germany over the recent Christmas and New Year holidays. Robert Fico made the comments amid pressure on the European Union member state to accept more migrants fleeing war and poverty, and amid wider anti-migrant sentiments in Eastern Europe.

Click below to hear the full report from correspondent Stefan Bos

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has made halting Islamic immigration a key element of his campaign ahead of parliamentary elections in March. His leftist government has filed a lawsuit against the European Commission's plan for mandatory quotas to share out as many as 160,000 asylum seekers among the EU's 28 member states.

Slovakia, has been to take in 802 migrants under the European scheme, but Fico makes clear his nation does not want them. "Not only are we refusing mandatory quotas, we will never make a voluntary decision that would lead to formation of a unified Muslim community in Slovakia," he told reporters. “This is the only way to eliminate the risks.”

He also linked the influx of migrants into Europe to the November attacks in Paris and reports of 90 women in the German city of Cologne being assaulted saying "Multi-culturalism is a fiction. Once you let migrants in, you can face such problems."

Fico's anti-immigration stance finds an echo with voters in Slovakia, which received only 169 asylum requests last year. The Catholic nation of 5.4 million people took 149 Christians from Iraq late last year. But they faced a frosty reception. Plans to lodge them with local volunteer families had to be abandoned after public protests.

Views shared

Slovakia’s tough views are shared in neighboring Hungary where right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's government has also challenged mandatory quotas in court.  And on Friday he told state radio that the flow of migrants entering the EU must be fully stopped, not just slowed.

He warned that halting the influx would be the “decisive issue of 2016” and urged the construction of a “European defense line” on Greece’s northern border with Macedonia and Bulgaria.

Orbán has defended Hungary’s decision to build anti-migration  fences along its borders with Serbia and Croatia which he claimed was aimed at protecting the EU’s passport-free ‘Schengen zone’. “Since no one except us Hungarians protected their external Schengen borders, defences, visa systems, border controls and fences are being created inside” the Schengen area, he said.

Orbán has repeatedly said the influx of refugees into Europe threatens to undermine the continent's Christian roots. More than 390,000 migrants passed through Hungary in 2015 on their way to more welcoming, richer, Western nations.

Anti-migration campaign

Hungary’s government has launched an anti-migration campaign in local media. It also published billboards warning migrants fleeing war and poverty not to take respect Hungarian laws and culture and not to take the jobs of Hungarians. Ironically all slogans are in Hungarian which virtually none of the refugees can read.

Elsewhere in the region the president of the Czech Republic, Milos Zeman, has called the influx of refugees and migrants an “organized invasion”.

And the recently elected right-wing government in Poland has also spoken in favour of stemming migration, saying they cannot repeat the mistakes of other countries. However it reportedly said it would stick to its predecessor's commitment to take in about 7,000 migrants.

Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War Two has also underscored tensions between West and East, where countries with young democracies have little or no experience with multicultural societies following decades of Communist rule.