Saturday 31 December 2016

Dr Usama is Leaving for Manchester



Today's From Our Own Correspondent featured yet another attack on the Hungarian government by the BBC's Central Europe correspondent Nick Thorpe.

In it he fulminated (in mellifluous prose) against the Hungarian government's behaviour during the migrant crisis and the "xenophobia" now rampant in Hungary. 

He then focused on one individual: a nice Syrian doctor called Dr Usama who's done great things in Hungary and who inspired one kindly old Hungarian woman to welcomed the "refugees". 

Nick just couldn't get his head round the polling evidence that barely one in five Hungarians would feel comfortable living next to an Arab. Few of them have ever met an Arab, he said. And if they did, then they would surely change their minds - just like his nice Hungarian lady, 

Nick blames the Hungarian government.

Dr Usama feels so unwelcome that he's now joining his wife, son and three of his daughters who have already left Hungary to come and live in Manchester, here in the UK.

Nick vented his frustration this morning:
What has shocked me all along in the official handling of the refugee crisis in Hungary is the failure to recognise refugees as human beings, to find out their names and why they felt the need to flee their homes and countries. If they had this story might have ended differently.
It's an odd thing that the BBC can be so keen to demonstrate its impartiality that it refuses to call Islamic State 'Da'esh' because that's "a pejorative name" coined by their enemies and as doing so (as Lord Hall put it) "may give the impression of support for those who coined it and that would not preserve the BBC's impartiality", and yet it's prepared to give Nick Thorpe full freedom, time and time again, to give his far-from-impartial take on the Hungarian government and "the refugee crisis".

4 comments:

  1. Find out their names lol! It would help if the refugees brought some documents with them...that would be a start wouldn't it?

    Has Dr Usama checked with the Guardian about the UK? According to the Guardian we're a racist hellhole with rocketing levels of hate crime. Come to think of it, that's pretty much the BBC view as well.

    I did have a couple of Hungarians as colleagues a few years back...my God, when it comes to racism, don't ask a Magyar what they think about their Roma compatriots. No point in pretending they aren't racist, they are. But equally when it comes to what it means to be subjected to Sharia law, they have plenty experience of that vis a vis the Ottoman Empire.




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  2. The funny thing is that everyone else who uses the acronym (I think) Da'esh does so because they don't want to say 'Islamic' out loud because that would connect Islam with their horror show. For the same reason, the BBC uses the qualifier 'so-called' Islamic State. Which is idiotic because ISIS/L are the ones who call themselves that.

    Beeboids would freak out if everyone started referring to 'the so-called British Broadcasting Corporation'.

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  3. David - good idea from now on let's call them that.

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  4. People seem to forget that Hungary is one of the poorest countries in Europe, with a lot of problems of its own. Why should Hungarians add to their burdens by accepting refugees? They are perfectly friendly and welcoming people (I lived there for several years) but they have been shafted time and time again by every invading force that swept across Europe, and are understandably a little wary of it happening again. What puzzles me is why people like Mr Thorpe can't understand this.

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