“Shocking images on abandoned telephones”: Hungarian Television shows its anonymous source (Orange Files screenshot).

On October 9, 2015, state-run Hungarian Television broadcast a report on images and videos allegedly found on telephones that migrants discarded after crossing into Hungary near the village of Röszke along the Hungarian-Serbian border earlier this year. Hungarian Television reported three days previously that it had received the telephones containing the images from an anonymous resident of Röszke who had “helped the authorities as a civilian volunteer in their work at the border” (source in Hungarian from 7:54).

The October 9 Hungarian Television report is typical of those that Hungary’s state-run media has broadcast regarding the Great Migration regularly over the past few months in order to support the Orbán government’s contention that migrants represent a grave immediate threat to the security of Hungary and all of Europe.

Below are an Orange Files video of the original Hungarian Television report in Hungarian and a transcription of the report in English. Note: volume of video increases at 0:38.

Newscaster (0:00): Next is a shocking story with disturbing images. We are continuing to examine those telephones that the immigrants left or threw away in the vicinity of the border. There are more than 1,000 pictures and videos in the telephones. There is one recording in which men who apparently know one another well intentionally harm and torture one another. According to the psychologist, this could represent a type of preparation for psychological and physical pain.

Reporter (0:20) In this recording a young man shoots a gun at his companion, who falls down. We will show it once again. He aims, fires, the man in white clothing screams, grabs his abdomen and falls to his knees. Somebody records all of this on a video. These same two men are visible on this recording. They are sitting in a car and putting the bleeding wound on camera as well. On Monday we showed those telephones that the immigrants left in Röszke. We found these shocking videos on those devices.

Reporter (0:51: This is another recording from the telephones. On it one sees that a dozen men crowded together in a room. The two kneeling young men dressed in white are continually slapping one another. Next to them a man dressed in camouflage holds a pistol and exhorts them to hit harder. The others look at all of this with bored indifference as if it were natural.

Criminal Psychologist (1:14): They hit him, beat him, tortured him. He himself will believe in the effectiveness of this.

Reporter (1:18): According to the criminal psychologist, these exercises will make it natural that they harm one another. In this way they become psychologically hardened so that they will not break down during a possible interrogation and will better tolerate physical pain as well.

Criminal Psychologist (1:31): They also fight with one another because they have learned the aggressive method of handling conflict in the parental home, in their country and they see this and they experience this. Thus if they have to quickly resolve a conflict what remains is “I’ll get rid of you.”

Reporter (1:45): In the course of their European journey there have been several instances in which the migrants have issued death threats in conflict situations. Television crews have recorded some of these. In Serbia, for example, one of them showed the M1 film crew that he would cut their throats. In Slovakia, a child of hardly ten years old showed a cameraman the same thing and at the Eastern Railway station they also threatened a TV2 reporter. [Criminal Psychologist] József Végh says that for these people death is what counts, not life.

Criminal Psychologist (2:14): It is so glorious to be a suicide terrorist that there is a competition to see whose relative can be a suicide attacker. The person who can be one is chosen. And an average mortal simply cannot be a suicide attacker.

Reporter (2:25): The specialist also said that in Hungary they have already modified training for hostage negotiators as well. They must now be prepared to negotiate with those arriving from the Middle East about their deaths and not their lives.

See this report on Hungarian Television website.

See previous Orange Files posts on the Great Migration: Viktor’s New Sign; The Curtain Falls Again; Hungary and the Great Migration; The Fields Are Speaking Pashto; Stage 3: Dehumanization; Fortress Hungary; Sign War I; and National Consultation on Immigration and Terrorism.