The Hungary Helps Programme has undergone changes as per new legislation effective 1 January, making Hungarian involvement even more robust in the future, Tristan Azbej, the State Secretary responsible for programmes aiding persecuted Christians within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, during an interview on the M1 news channel on Wednesday, 3 January.

Tristan Azbej explained that through these amendments,

Hungary will not only provide humanitarian aid, but will also contribute to economic development and peace-building efforts.

This enhanced Hungarian participation aims to assert Christian solidarity more effectively and meanwhile uphold the principle that assistance should be taken where trouble exists, rather than importing problems to Europe. Azbej asserted that providing life-saving aid to the persecuted is a humanitarian duty.

According to the State Secretary, Christianity has become the most persecuted religion globally,

with approximately 5,000 people being killed each year for following Christ. He added that a significant portion of these attacks, around 80 per cent, occurs in Nigeria. Over Christmas, ‘jihadist, Islamist-minded pastoral tribes’ attacked 20 Christian settlements in the African country, resulting in the massacre of about 200 Christians. Azbej noted that these attacks were deliberately timed to coincide with Christmas services, revealing jihadist-Islamist motivations behind them.

He also pointed out that only a few reports in the Western media have covered these events, often portraying them as attacks by pastoral tribes on farming villages. The State Secretary went on to highlight that there was a lack of acknowledgement that the attacks on Christians may be orchestrated by jihadist Islamist tribes armed and trained by the Islamist terrorist organization Al-Qaeda. It is crucial to break the indifference, silence, and denial and explicitly state that this is Christian persecution, the State Secretary emphasized.

Azbej also drew attention to the presence of Islamist terrorism in Europe, citing reports of planned attacks in Germany, which, fortunately, authorities were able to prevent. He recalled an Islamist attacker targeting a Catholic church in Spain during spring, where a sacristan was killed, and a priest was seriously injured.

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Sources: Hungarian Conservative/MTI