Stories of transition: Budapest, Hungary

I first became aware of the current crisis in December of 2014.  One day in Advent a new family joined us for worship, possibly the poorest family I had ever seen.  The father, mother and four children wore ragged clothes unfit for winter, they were dirty, and even in our international congregation no one could find a common language with them.

A Somali refugee who happened to be a long-standing member of our church had brought them to church this morning.

"I was on the way to church and saw them at the underground station. They were all crying; not just the children--all of them.  I told them I was going to church and they should come with me."

Somehow we gathered that they needed shelter for two nights until their ride would come and take them to Sweden.  We contacted various mission agencies and human rights groups with whom we sometimes work and finally found a women's shelter with room for them.

"Not our profile," the staff person told me, "but we have space at the moment, and it's Christmas after all. We can fit a family for 2 nights."

Using the showers seemed to present the family with a learning curve, but we got them settled for the night. The next morning the staff called: "We finally found a common language. They are from Kosovo, and speak Albanian."

With this information, I called around again, and none of my colleagues working with refugees were surprised.  Without exception, they told me that the Balkan route had become a major point of entry into the EU.  I looked up UNHCR statistics and discovered that the number of asylum seekers had increased exponentially in the previous two years.  The media was hardly talking about the issue, if at all, but I suspected that would change.

“I was on the way to church and saw them at the underground station. They were all crying; not just the children—all of them.  I told them I was going to church and they should come with me.”

Then one story made headlines when a train full of Kosovars was stopped at the Austrian border.  Making matters worse was that cleaning staff made a public show of disinfecting the waiting room at the station, sending an image to the media that refugees leave refuse behind.

Then were the terrorist attacks in Charlie Hebdo headquarters and other areas of Paris.  From that city, the Hungarian Prime Minister announced that the EU immigration policy was failing to protect Europe from terrorism, and Hungary would show how to remedy things.

From that point on there was a public relations campaign on the part of the government prejudicing the population against migrants.

In summer as I passed by the railway stations, I saw more and more foreigners sitting around, waiting: waiting for an arranged ride out, waiting for directions on how to report to reception centres, waiting for trains to carry them farther.  Through the course of the summer those numbers grew until both Keleti railway station became a de facto refugee camp, as was Nyugati station.

What was the church's previous involvement with migrants?

We are an international, English-speaking congregation of the Reformed Church in Hungary, so in the ten years since that church set up its refugee ministry, we have been a welcoming community not only to international students or employees of multinational companies, but to refugees and asylum-seekers, too. Sometimes this has meant providing space for cultural events, sometimes it has meant an intentional outreach of pastoral care, and on occasion it has even meant financial support.

One of the refugees to become a member of our congregation in the past ten years is the same one who brought the Kosovar family to us. I think it speaks volumes that a number of Hungarians must have passed the same family in need, but it was a refugee who, not knowing what else to do, took them to a church.

How did you respond to the need? What were the challenges/ opportunities?

The refugee ministry of the Hungarian Reformed Church has specialised in integration support service: school integration programs, housing programs, Hungarian as a Second Language courses, and job training.  When changes in EU funding and in the strategy shift within the RCH led to an end of those programs, our new partner became the Kalunba Charity Association. In various ways, we have connected with these initiatives.  As a congregation alone, we would not have the expertise to reach out effectively and might have even done more harm than good, but by joining with professionals for the RCH and Kalunba, we are able to engage with meaningful outreach.

When the migration crisis became tangible in Hungary, the urgent need was for a different sort of outreach.  What was needed was food and water at the railway stations, as well as legal advice and translation assistance. Some of the refugees with whom we work helped out in these areas.  Because of our limited capacity, it was difficult to address that urgent need in addition to the work we were already doing.

Some of us volunteered on occasion at the railway stations, but ours was not a large, coordinated effort in that regard.

But then I received an e-mail from a woman asking if we could help as she had met an infant less than a week old. With our colleagues and the RCH Refugee Mission and the Kalunba Charity Association, we decided to set up an overnight shelter for families who would otherwise spend the night at the stations. For 4-5 nights we provided shelter to around twenty people each night. We offered warm food, a chance to wash, legal information, and a safe place to sleep.  Each morning, the people continued their route to other destinations. Each night, others arrived. 

But as the borders to Austria and Germany opened, entry into Hungary became more difficult. The railway stations cleared out, and the need for our shelter vanished.

What is the situation now? 

In terms of crisis, the main worries in Hungary now are a legal system that makes it virtually impossible to seek asylum in Hungary. In terms of the refugees who have status here, an environment of xenophobia makes it very difficult for them find jobs and find flats.

One of our aims is to raise these concerns to colleagues within the Reformed Church in Hungary so that they may join us as advocates for compassion.  The media outlets of the RCH have been helpful in this regard.

What has been the aftermath of the summer and has anything changed in the life of the church as a result of what happened?

The work we did in summer and early fall energised our congregation. We have a few new members who came to us because in us they saw a church concerned with social justice. We still offer space to the Kalunba Associate for its language courses, so there is still contact between refugees and other members of the congregation. Everyone wants to see the relationship continue beyond the crisis of the summer.

Aaron Stevens is minister of St. Columba's Scottish Church, Budapest