THE SITUATION OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE MIDDLE EAST—INTERVIEW WITH STATE SECRETARY TRISTAN AZBEJ Tamás Kozma–Zsombor Szabolcs Pál, 14 January 2021, Budapest
As a State Secretary, you are tasked with coordinating Hungarian aid programmes aimed at helping persecuted Christians all around the world. Could you sum up your activities and the main principles of the Hungarian government’s humanitarian efforts? What can a small country like Hungary do for the millions of persecuted Christians all around the world? The Hungary Helps programme is Hungary’s international aid programme that has been running under this name since the beginning of 2017. As Hungary is an emerging donor in terms of international aid, it became important to set a solid framework for the government’s international aid activity within the state structure. A few decades ago, Hungary was on the receiving end of aid, but we have since stepped up our share in international solidarity. Now, what makes a notable difference between the Hungarian 24
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international aid activity and many other national or international aid programmes is that we were the first to recognise the extent of Christian persecution in the world. We found that it was not only one of the most pressing human rights crises of our age but also the least addressed one. We also think that this situation, the lack of freedom of religion and belief, which makes it difficult for Christians around the world to follow their religion, is also connected to humanitarian crises in many instances. For example, in the Middle East, it was quite well known that ISIS carried out genocide and mass atrocities based on religious intolerance and religious hatred against the Yazidis, Christians, and other faith groups which created a humanitarian crisis that was very specific to those groups who were attacked or oppressed because of their religious identity. Christians are the most persecuted belief group across the globe: we have just received statistical data showing that 340 million Christians are persecuted or discriminated around the world for their faith. That is why we have become committed to dealing with this issue on a governmental and, more importantly, on an international level. Therefore, the Hungarian government decided to identify aiding persecuted Christians as one of the key priorities of its international aid policy. There is a common misunderstanding that Hungary Helps means aiding persecuted Christians. Through its programme, Hungary does not help Christians exclusively; that would not be consistent with Christian values. However, our support for persecuted Christians is explicit— non-exclusive, but explicit. Moreover, for this programme, the Hungarian government set up a dedicated department that has the term “aid for
