Following his meeting with Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Paweł Jabłoński, Tristan Azbej, Hungary’s State Secretary for the Aid of Persecuted Christians, announced at a press conference that the two governments have signed a cooperation agreement in the arena of humanitarian policy.
“While the primary concern for both governments must be to take care of their own people, helping those in need is rooted in our Christian cultural backgrounds,” State Secretary Azbej said, adding that help should be brought directly to where it’s needed instead of channeling it through massive international organizations.
According to Azbej, we must not leave behind those groups that are ignored by large international charity organizations. “Persecuted Christians are one such group,” the state secretary said.
Hungary and Poland have agreed to set up a joint working group to pool experiences and knowledge about humanitarian crises. “Our countries,” Tristan Azbej continued, “are bound together by a long-standing solidarity, and it is this solidarity that calls upon us to help innocent people who are suffering.”
In the Hungarian state secretary’s view, instead of managing migration, we must focus our efforts on resolving problems where they occur. “Instead of bringing the trouble over here, we must bring help to where it’s needed,” State Secretary Azbej said.
Suggesting that today’s agreement could be a significant step towards an even closer cooperation between Hungary and Poland, Deputy Foreign Minister Jabłoński said that Hungary and Poland are “not just partners; we are friends with shared values and positions on a number of questions.”
“More and more people are suffering from religious persecution, and we must help them,” Jabłoński said. He concluded by saying that in order to do this, we need more than words; we need real action.
Photo credit: MTI/Zsolt Szigetváry