Hi. Hello everybody, and welcome.

So first of all – I recently heard the fact, I think through the HVG, that the youths currently residing in Fót, who have either had their status as refugees confirmed, or are in the process – they too can be deported back to these transit zones. These young people have lived there for a while and the majority of them now speak Hungarian, are learning Hungarian – so in fact would like to integrate into society, don’t even want to go anywhere else. They’d like to stay here; probably they’ve worked together for a long time with the kind people who’ve taken them in, and they’ve enjoyed themselves. So what’s happening is an inhumanity. And I’m here in the first place and accepted this task evidently because I consider it my moral obligation, but also to ask forgiveness from the people who have to undergo this suffering. All the people who become victims of aggressive acts, or undergo humiliation, because of the activities of the Hungarian government. I’d like to ask forgiveness from Ahmed and his family who are forcibly separated from each other and who are faced with these appalling 10 year-long sentences, I ask forgiveness (clearly in the first place I can only do so in my own name) that all this can happen in this country.

It’s not easy to be Hungarian today in Hungary. What’s happening is hard to identify with, but obviously we must, and we need to admit that this is our issue. I want not only to ask forgiveness but also to say thanks to all the people who’ve come here today, and all those who try to reduce the suffering of these people with their generous self-sacrificing work – be they members of civil organisations or volunteers, private individuals, or representatives of the Church, like Tamás Liszkai, who dare stand up with their opinions and even do something to change this situation.

Obviously the situation we are in is owed primarily to Viktor Orbán. He is the person who has generated this situation; he’s the one who created, invented, and pushed through these laws; he is the one to whom is owed the existence of the awful institution that is the Border Patrol, thanks to which, to reduce unemployment, young people who don’t know what to do with their energy fill up these organisations through which they can indulge their lowest and basest instincts. This is an awful institution, and I have to say that not only Viktor Orbán should be ashamed, if indeed principally him, and naturally those individuals like János Ádár or László Kövér, or perhaps Péter Polt, or György Nográdi – and we could list all the party-soldiers who bring about this situation – but sadly I need to say that the people who take part in this, be it as border patrolmen or as policemen or as border guards, should be ashamed too. I have to say, addressing these people too: what you’re doing, what you’ve done, is low, inhuman, shameful, but it’s never too late to confront this. It’s never too late to face up to the fact that we have done wrong. It’s never too late to face up to the fact that, through some lack of knowledge or primitivity, we have not been able to comprehend that what we are doing is basically inhuman. It’s never too late for a person to change their opinion. It’s never too late to accept that they have been violent. 

I think that an increasingly large part of Hungarian society is going to confront this violence – which is not necessarily expressed only physically but also in any other form, be it a public prosecution or extraordinary NAV investigation, or anything of the kind – all these things which can call out violence, or within whose frameworks violence can be realised. I think that a growing number of people will realise that this spiral reaches everywhere: that it will eventually reach the whole of Hungarian society, including those voters who for the moment strengthen the Fidesz camp. I trust that Hungarian society will face up to this, and that we will be able to somehow keep in check or change this system.

And the other thing I hold important to say is that, although we are constantly speaking of violence here – because I think that Viktor Orbán stands not on the side of the Hungarian people but on that of violence – regardless of this fact we must not be violent. We cannot fight violence with violence. So we need to hold out courageously, responsibly, but never in the language of violence. And I think that eventually, it’s always this peaceful process which eventually triumphs, and somehow this horror will be over one day. But for that naturally we need to be wary and we need to be there at every such situation – and for that reason I thank you very much, joining Liszkai Tamás in this, that you too came to this event, and that we can publicise the fact that this isn’t okay, and it’s time to change it. 

Thank you for hearing me out, and I wish everyone a great deal of strength and perseverance.

Árpád Schilling

Watch the full-length VIDEO about the demonstration here. My speech starts at 05:50.

PRESS

• Angel Marianna Kovács: A határok megnyitását követelték a röszkei tüntetők. 24.hu, 15. 04. 2017.
   
• Pál Dániel Rényi: A menekültek mellett tüntettek Röszkén. 444.hu, 15. 04. 2017.
   
• Gulyás Márton Röszkén is tüntetett. Népszava, 15. 04. 2017.