Six people taken into custody after poster reading ‘If you come to Hungary, you cannot take the jobs of Hungarians’ was defaced in central Budapest

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Activists in Hungary have been arrested after defacing government billboards which warned immigrants not to take Hungarians’ jobs.

The six people arrested are from the Együtt (Together) opposition party. Police said that five of the six had admitted responsibility for the vandalism and had been released.

The posters targeted by the activists were on display in central Budapest and said: “If you come to Hungary, you cannot take the jobs of Hungarians.”

Hungary’s government, led by the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, and his rightwing Fidesz party, recently launched a national consultation on “immigration and terrorism”.

A series of anti-immigration posters were put up as part of the campaign. As well as cautioning against taking Hungarians’ jobs, the posters demand newcomers to Hungary respect the nation’s culture and laws.

A questionnaire sent to Hungarian voters as part of the consultation appears to connect migration with terrorism, as well as floating the idea of putting all illegal immigrants into internment camps.

Last month, Orban, who has ruled Hungary since 2010, described the EU’s quotas for taking in asylum-seekers as “bordering on insanity”. In response, the EU commission’s vice president, Frans Timmersmans, condemned Orban’s questionnaire as “malicious and wrong”.

On Tuesday Orban hit out again, suggesting that mass migration into the EU would amount to the end of Christian Europe and “change the face of Europe’s civilisation”.

Fidesz has recently been losing ground to the far-right Jobbik party, which is thought to have prompted the government’s recent anti-immigration push.

Orban has also suggested Hungary might consider reintroducing the death penalty, which was abolished following the fall of communism in 1989, again prompting fierce criticism from Brussels.