A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
Opinion
There is a whiff of rank hypocrisy hanging over the worldwide protests since President Trump imposed his ban on people entering the United States from seven mainly-Muslim countries — a whiff which is especially pungent over the countries of the European Union.
European politicians like Viktor Orban, the Hungarian Prime
Minister, express views about migrants that make President Trump look like a left-wing anarchist. Orban wants to build a fence to keep migrants from the East out of his country. “Migrants,” he says, “are a poison that my country won’t swallow.” His Fidesz party is in the same grouping in the European Parliament as Mrs Merkel’s Christian Democrats. He and she work together at European summits. Why isn’t Mrs Merkel organising a ban on Mr Orban going to Brussels?
The Prime Minister of neighbouring Slovakia, Robert Fico, said that Islam had “no place” in his country. He speaks of the need to “monitor every Muslim” and won’t let a single Muslim refugee enter his country. Last year, Slovakia assumed the EU presidency!
French President Francois Hollande and Bristish Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn are members of the same European political group as the anti-immigration Slovakian Prime Minister. Their criticism of President Trump has been ferocious. Yet neither has expressed a single word of admonishment with regard to Fico. Why is this?
Patrick Cooper
