The German government’s media arm, Deutsche Welle (DW), has accused Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of the “dangerous export of ideologies” regarding anti-migrant protests in a small Transylvanian village in neighboring Romania.
“Xenophobic incidents are not a new phenomenon in Romania. The events in Ditrău illustrate, however, how successfully Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been exporting his less-than-liberal ideologies to neighboring countries, creating parallel ethnic worlds in Hungarian minority communities there,” DW writes.
The article does not appear to be an editorial either, but instead, a news piece, in what is only DW’s latest attack directed against Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the Hungarian government.
The article refers to the highly publicized case of a bakery in the Transylvanian village of Ditrău, also known as Gyergyóditró, that has been allegedly unable to find qualified local workers. The bakery employed last month two legally employed guest workers from Sri Lanka, causing an uproar in part of the local population.
According to the latest census in 2011, the village had 4,867 inhabitants, 4,766 of which were ethnic Hungarians.
Last week a local Catholic priest and about two hundred protesters gathered in front of the Ditró mayor’s office to demonstrate against what they called an infiltration of foreigners. The landlady who had taken in the Sri Lankan bakers allegedly received threats, and the two men were forced to leave the village.
The DW article indicates that while some Romanian politicians like former President Traian Băsescu used the case to dial up anti-Hungarian rhetoric, the situation on the ground is more complex.
