A rise in right-wing radicalism is fuelling the spread of xenophobia and extremist attitudes towards religious minorities in Europe, the Minority Rights Group International (MRG) said in a press release coinciding with the launch of the group’s world report in Budapest on Thursday.
“Ultra right-wing parties, aiming to establish themselves in mainstream political arenas in Europe, justify their anti-immigration, antisemitic and Islamophobic rhetoric by stoking fears that religious minorities and immigrants are a threat to modern societies,” the report says.
“Successes in the 2009 European Parliamentary elections, and at the national parliamentary level, have allowed these populist right-wing parties to shift formerly far-right ideas, on immigration for example, into the mainstream,” MRG’s Director of Policy and Communications Carl Soderbergh said, presenting the State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples report, themed for 2010 on religious minorities.
“The growth in support for European far-right wing parties has also affected other minorities,” the press release said. In Hungary, anti-Roma sentiment and violence escalated, taking six lives and leaving dozens injured in the period between January 2008 and April 2010, it said.
