After a Hungarian camerawoman was caught on film tripping a refugee carrying his child who was running away from Hungarian police, the camerawoman’s employer, N1TV, decided to terminate her contract.
The same camerawoman can also be seen kicking other refugees, including a young girl.
The incident happened in the town of Roszke in southern Hungary, close to the Serbian border, as refugees broke through a police line at a collection point. The woman has been identified as Petra Laszlo. The station she was on assignment for is affiliated with Jobbik, Hungary’s far right party.
“An N1TV colleague today behaved in an unacceptable way at the Roszke collection point,” the TV station’s editor-in-chief said in a statement on Facebook, in which he also announced contract was terminated on the same day.
The video went viral, sparking outrage in Hungary and elsewhere. Opposition parties spoke of launching charges against Laszlo for “violence against a member of the community.”
Hungary faces an influx of refugees and migrants who want to make their way to Western Europe. The country’s prime minister Viktor Orban has used fear-mongering rhetoric about refugees who “threaten Europe’s Christian identity,” and has explicitly said that they are not welcome in the country. Hungarians themselves are divided, some agreeing with their leader, but many also lending the arriving refugees a helping hand, providing food and other supplies to the thousands camped out in Budapest.