European securityEU cities have 900 “no-go zones”: Hungary’s government

Hungary’s right-wing government, ahead of a national referendum on the question of EU-mandated refugee quotas for EU member states, has claimed in a Web site post which supports the government’s anti-migration stance, that there are 900 “no-go zones” in London, Paris, Stockholm, and Berlin.

The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has announced that his country will not take part in the EU’s plan to relocate 160,000 migrants across the continent, calling it an abuse of power by the EU.

The Daily Mail reports that thereferendum, to be held in the autumn, will ask: “Do you want the EU to prescribe the mandatory relocation of non-Hungarian citizens to Hungary without the approval of the Hungarian parliament?”

The government Web page, entitled “We say no to mandatory migrant quotas,” defines the 900 “no-go zones” as “neighborhoods not under control, or hardly kept under control,” where “the norms of the host society … barely prevail.”

Zoltán Kovács, the government spokesman, when asked to name the areas of London which are no-go zones, told the Guardian: “Everything is based on publicly available data and sources.”

The Guardian notes that the Hungarian state ministry’s Web posting cited blogs and conspiracy Web sites as evidence.

The government posting, for example, claimed that 751 of the “no-go zones” are in France, relying on a 2006 blog post by Daniel Pipes about France’s zones urbaines sensibles (sensitive urban zones). Pipes, who is credited with coining the phrase “no-go zone” to describe neighborhoods with high immigrant populations, later retracted this statement after visiting France. “Having this first-hand experience, I regret having translated what the French government terms zones urbaines sensibles as no-go zones,” he wrote in 2013.

The Hungarian ministry also quotes conspiracy theorist Steve Emerson, who claimed last year that the city of Birmingham was “totally Muslim” (Prime Minister David Cameron reacted to the claims by Emerson, who describes himself as a “terrorism expert,” by saying: “When I heard this, frankly, I choked on my porridge and I thought it must be April Fool’s Day,” adding, “[T]his guy is clearly a complete idiot.”)

The Hungarian ministry offers other evidence to support its claims, citing an American’s blog on Sweden (with a dead link) to a map of fifty-five “hot zones” said to have been identified by the Swedish as “no-go zones,” although the Swedish police said it was not using the term and that, in any event, there are no neighborhoods in Sweden where the police does not go.

The ministry also cites as supporting a Daily Telegraph article about the Brussels district of Molenbeek.

The Web page also shows a ticking clock to support the claim that a migrant is entering Europe every twelve seconds. Critics of the government point out, however, that according to official Hungarian police statistics, that figure inflates the current reality on the Hungarian border by over 6,000 percent.