Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has said that the lesson learnt after World War II was that Hungary’s most precious asset is its sovereignty.
During the inauguration of a memorial dedicated to the victims of Soviet occupation, in the Óbuda district of Budapest yesterday, the prime minister stressed the importance of building a strong and united Hungary so that history doesn’t repeat itself.
“We paid the price for our weakness, for the loss of our independence, with the abduction, deportation and displacement of hundreds of thousands of people,” the prime minister said. He also highlighted the importance of protecting Hungary’s sovereignty, because “we know full well that if we give them an inch, they will take a mile,” he said.
PM Orbán pointed out that the Gulag Memorial imposes the obligation to create a Hungary in which similar events can never happen again. Therefore, all unreasonable ideas, confused thoughts and plans serving foreign interests must be kept outside the country’s borders, he stressed.
The prime minister added that Hungarians should be proud that their country has never created oppressive ideologies and has never sought to condemn anyone to a colonial fate. “Our people are a sober nation, who know that peace, freedom and independence are important not only for us; they therefore respect and recognize other nations’ right to those ideals,” he said.
The prime minister concluded by stating that under no circumstances should we take for granted today’s free and democratic world. We should instead see it as something exceptional, as a state of grace that can only be maintained and prolonged if “we are determined never to allow something like this to happen to us again.”