The Hungarian government “has a vision of Europe that supports peace and stability, not only in its immediate vicinity but for example in Africa and the Middle East,” Tristan Azbej, Hungary’s state secretary in charge of assistance to Christian communities worldwide, told MTI from Stuttgart by phone on Wednesday. The state secretary attended the opening of events commemorating the 2014 genocide of Iraqi Christians and Yazidis committed by the terrorist Islamic State, and said “in each case we must support peace rather than escalation.”
He said “people in crisis zones should be helped to stay in their homelands rather than promote migration”. Azbej said he had been invited by Yazidi survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad to represent the Hungary Helps programme. He noted that the Hungarian government had helped Iraq’s Yazidi community with a total 1.1 million euros in the past six years, apart from the humanitarian and reconstruction programmes provided to that country.
The Yazidi genocide claimed 5,000 lives, with 6,000 young women being captured and subjected to sexual slavery, he said, adding that some 500,000 people fled their homes and 150,000 were still “living from day to day” as internally displaced people. “Commemorating the genocide is also aimed to save those people from continued persecution and discrimination,” Azbej said.