Czech
president: migrants should be fighting Isis, not 'invading' Europe
Milos
Zeman says children, the old and sick deserve compassion but young
single men fleeing Middle East should stay behind and take up arms
Agence France-Presse
in Prague
Sunday 27 December
2015 03.10 GMT
The Czech president,
Milos Zeman, has called the movement of refugees into Europe “an
organised invasion” and declared that young men from Syria and Iraq
should stay in their countries to “take up arms” against Isis.
“I am profoundly
convinced that we are facing an organised invasion and not a
spontaneous movement of refugees,” said Zeman in his Christmas
message to the Czech Republic.
Compassion was
“possible” for refugees who were old or sick, and for children,
he said but not for young men who should be back home fighting
against jihadists.
“A large majority
of the illegal migrants are young men in good health and single. I
wonder why these men are not taking up arms to go fight for the
freedom of their countries against the Islamic State,” said Zeman,
who was elected Czech president in early 2013.
Fleeing their
war-torn countries only served to strengthen Isis, he said.
The 71-year-old
evoked a comparison to the situation of Czechs who left their country
when it was under Nazi occupation from 1939 to 1945.
It is not the first
time Zeman has taken a controversial stance on Europe’s worst
migrant crisis since World War II.
In November the
leftwinger attended an anti-Islam rally in Prague in the company of
far-right politicians and a paramilitary unit.
The country’s
prime minister, Bohuslav Sobotka, who has previously criticised the
head of state’s comments, said Zeman’s Christmas message was
based “on prejudices and his habitual simplification of things”.
Migrants are not the
only target of Zeman’s caustic remarks: he said last week that his
country should introduce the euro on the first day after indebted
Greece’s departure from the common currency, causing Athens to
recall its ambassador.
He also said he was
“very disappointed” that talks in the summer to eject Greece from
the euro did not come to fruition.
Both the Czech
Republic and Slovakia, former communist countries that joined the
European Union in 2004, have rejected the EU’s system of quotas for
distributing refugees amid the current migrant wave.
More than a million
migrants and refugees reached Europe in 2015, mainly fleeing violence
in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
The crisis has
strained ties within the European Union, with mostly newer members
taking a firm anti-migrant stance and some northern countries like
Germany welcoming those fleeing war.
Few asylum seekers
have chosen to stay in the Czech Republic, a Nato member nation of
10.5 million people.
Regardless, a recent
survey showed that nearly 70% of Czechs oppose the arrival of
migrants and refugees in their country.
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