Bratislava, Feb 12 (CTK) – The solution to the migrant crisis in the EU rests in the deportation of economic migrants as well as religious fanatics among them, Czech President Milos Zeman said on Friday, adding that jihadists are among the Muslim migrants.
Speaking at an international conference on Social Democracy in the 21st Century, Zeman indirectly described Muslim migrants as persons who are not able to adapt themselves to European culture and that there are jihadists who could be preparing terrorist attacks among them.
“The sole possible solution to the migrant crisis is the deportation of the economic migrants and those who preach religious violence, religious hatred, briefly, those who are preparing acts of terrorism…,” Zeman said.
“We cannot hope that there are no jihadists among the migrants, or people who can form ‘sleeping cells’ preparing monstrous terrorist actions as those in Paris recently,” Zeman said.
He said Social democracy should back the values of the traditional European culture, and he also indirectly criticised Islam.
“Social democracy should protect national interests, it should protect the historical roots not only of its own, but of European culture, too, and realise that this culture is incompatible with the culture of hatred for the unbelievers, with a culture based on the effort to subjugate these unbelievers and turn them into slaves,” Zeman said.
He also indirectly criticised Muslim migrants. “When using the word migration, we are forgetting one adjective, or Islamic migration. Islamic migration is unable to integrate and it is unable to assimilate into European culture,” Zeman said.
He justified this opinion saying that the Islamic civilisation denies women access to education and public posts and that a Muslim woman’s testimony at court has a half weight of a man’s.
Zeman also spoke about the strong communities of Vietnamese and Ukraininas living in the Czech Republic and said they have been capable of integrating into society.
He criticised the EU’s policy on the migrant crisis. “The European Union has utterly failed in tackling the migrant crisis. When the migrant wave arrived, the EU was wasting time with endlessly talking rubbish, which it nobly called discussion. It was talking nonsense about that we should welcome the migrants because we have a shortage of the workforce,” Zeman said, pointing to that the average unemployment in the EU is 11 percent.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer-Social Democracy) also spoke about the risks that he believes are involved in the migrant crisis.
“The protection of the outer border is a matter of survival,” Fico told the conference.
Fico warned about the economic and political consequences if the Schengen Area member countries start to close their own borders with their neighbours.
“The closed borders are a symbolic warning about the political consequences that could bring about the destruction of the European project,” Fico said.
Zeman, Fico and Austrian Trade Union head Erich Foglar also spoke about the position of social democray and welfare state at the conference.
Zeman was a member of the Czech Social Democratic Party (1992-2007) and its chairman in 1993-2001.
At the conference, he mentioned the Scandinavian countries as a model.
“The Scandinavian model of welfare state clearly proves that a high taxation rate is not an obstacle to economic success. On the contrary, it leads to the fundamental social democratic value, that is social solidarity. The redistribution via the tax channels eliminates the excessive polarisation of society, excessive and not entirely deserved differences between individual social groups,” Zeman said.
