Viktor Orban's fence may have earned the wrath of rights groups but it's going down well at a flower market near the Hungarian border town of Roszke, where the flow of migrants through fields of corn and sunflowers has suddenly dried up. The right-wing prime minister's critics say the fence on the frontier with Serbia flies in the face of international law. But to many on Hungary's southern frontier, the end justifies the means.
"Thank God that Viktor Orban is our prime minister," said a 46-year-old man who gave his name as Istvan and was selling flowers on Thursday at the Roszke market. "He doesn't have to be loved, but what he does is good." Echoing Orban in framing the issue as a defense of Europe's "Christian states" against mainly Muslim migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, Istvan said: "So far it seems that Hungary is the most Christian of all."