Prime Minister Fico: No Room for Islam in Slovakia

Bratislava, May 25 (TASR) – If someone says that Slovakia wants to be multicultural, they’re against the country in general, Prime Minister Robert Fico told TASR in an interview, confirming that Slovakia under his leadership will maintain its thumbs down on the migrant resettlement quotas.

“Our stance is legitimate and we will maintain it,” said Fico, adding that reality has proven Slovakia right. “If I had seen those other countries that champion the quotas do so much to actually comply with them, then our position wouldn’t have been so strong. But if you look at how many people they have already resettled based on the quota scheme, you see two big zeros,” said Fico.

Fico declared that the country must have an interest in preserving its own traditions, reiterating that he doesn’t wish to see the emergence of a ‘unified Islamic community’ in Slovakia. “I don’t want a few tens of thousands of Muslims in Slovakia gradually promoting their own agenda,” said the Prime Minister, pointing to the experience of Malta. “I spoke about this with the Maltese Prime Minister (Joseph Muscat) a couple of times and he told me that the problem is not the migrants coming in but migrants changing the character of the country.”

According to Fico: “We don’t want to change the character of this country, based on Methodius-Cyrillic traditions. Something that has been here for many centuries. Therefore, let’s be honest with ourselves and say out loud that it can’t be that way in Slovakia.” Fico added that the duty of politicians is to talk about these matters clearly and openly.

If such a course hadn’t been adopted, Slovakia would have seen similar developments than those in Austria, which is now experiencing a backlash to its welcoming stance of a year ago, said Fico. “If this isn’t a good enough a case study for some with respect to the migration crisis, then there’s the recent developments in Germany regarding the support for political parties,” said the Prime Minister. “Maybe if we hadn’t taken up the stance on the migration crisis that we have taken, then everything would have been different today.”