The article published on Tuesday by the influential US daily said that several hundreds of asylum seekers are expected to be transferred to the transit zones by May, which invoke images of the Jews, Roma and others detained in concentration camps during the second world war.

In a blog post on Friday, Kovács called the comparison “wrong” and “outright offensive”. The transit zones are not “prison camps”, he said, arguing that migrants are “free to leave, returning the way they came”, but are not allowed to move freely within the European Union.

The reasons for the strict measures were the recent terrorist attacks in Europe, Kovács said, where he said terrorists used “Europe’s porous borders and lax asylum procedures” to commit their crimes. The Hungarian government will not apologise for making the safety of Hungarians and other Europeans a priority, Kovács said.

Read the original NY Times article here

Republished with permission of Hungary Matters, MTI’s daily newsletter.

MTI photo: Koszticsák Szilárd