CV NEWS FEED // Religious freedom activist Jason Jones is challenging Hungary’s “Christian nationalist” reputation as the country appears to actively support Azerbaijan’s genocidal intentions in Armenia.
“Before you buy a picture of Hungary’s Viktor Orban to hang over your mantel,” Jones wrote in a May 3 op-ed for Stream, “consider this: Hungary is helping the same Turkish Islamist tribes who conducted the first Armenian Genocide to carry out a second one.”
Jones observed in his article that many Christians who move in right-wing circles do not realize the implications of Hungary’s warm relations with Azerbaijan, which currently seeks to eradicate the world’s oldest Christian population:
Many self-styled “Catholic Integralists” and “Christian Nationalists” think they’re being persecuted in the West, and hold up Orban’s government as a model for Christian civic engagement. They ought to ask his English-language apologists about Hungary’s role in promoting Islamist genocide. Armenia was a thriving Christian nation 700 years before the pagan Magyars stopped plundering central Europe and converted to Christianity.
April 24 marked the 109th anniversary of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, when at least 664,000 and possibly as many as 1.2 million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman government, which was controlled by the Turkish Committee of Union and Progress (CUP).
Now, Armenia faces ongoing threats from its eastern neighbor Azerbaijan in the aftermath of the Islamist nation’s recent ethnic cleansing of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, also known as Artsahk, and amid continual forced land concessions along the Armenian border.
After an illegal nine-month blockade imposed on the people of Artsakh by the Azerbaijani government in Baku followed by relentless drone strikes on the capital city of Stepanakert, the Nagorno-Karabakh region is completely emptied of Armenian presence. Armenians’ roots in the area may be traced back to the 5th century BC.
Currently, hundreds of Armenians led by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan of the northern border province of Tavush are marching to the capital city of Yerevan in protest against the Armenian government’s territorial concessions to Azerbaijan.
The Diocese of Artsakh issued a statement on May 7 in solidarity with the “Tavush for the Homeland” movement, in which it described the concessions as a process that “has put Armenia’s statehood in front of serious existential challenges.” The diocese continued:
The motherland is a guarantee of a decent existence for every son of our people, so we must find the wisdom and strength to turn back this downward wheel so that the Mother Homeland does not have the bitter experience of Artsakh.
We call on all of you to join the March of Peace and Solidarity organized by the “Tavush movement for the homeland”.
In response to the outcry over Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing of the Artsakh region, the European Union has been preparing an aid package for Armenia.
However, as Jones noted, Hungary has repeatedly vetoed efforts to supply the vulnerable Christian region with “non-lethal” aid from its European Peace Facility and demanded that equivalent funds be allocated to Azerbaijan.
Hungary’s support for Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has remained consistent since the 2020 war. Budapest officials even vetoed a statement by EU member states condemning the Azerbaijani missile strikes on Stepanakert, which culminated in the displacement of the region’s entire population, Jones recalled.
Ultimately, he concluded, “Christians in the West who don’t care about the ancient, apostolic communities of Christians now subject to persecution will have a lot to answer for on Judgment Day.”
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