The freedom to peacefully assemble remains a constitutional right in Hungary. The protection from being harassed when engaged in such activity: not so much, at least not in the current government’s practice.
The National Tax and Customs Administration of Hungary has started an investigation into the finances of two lead organizers of Hungary’s biggest opposition group. Continue reading
Last week, uniformed police officers surrounded the high school of a small Hungarian town. Their targets: four Roma students, all between the ages of 14 and 16, who were to be arrested and transported in handcuffs for questioning at the neighboring city’s police station. But according to residents of the town, the conflict between the local authorities and the Roma community involves more than just a school-yard spat. Namely, it has to do with religion, discrimination, and most especially with the responses of the town’s residents to the national census.
Sexual relationships before marriage, cohabitation, and non-heterosexual relationships are harmful, according to a new initiative funded by the Hungarian government.
The Hungarian Society for the Science of the Family (Magyar Családtudományi Társaság) was founded on Febr. 24. Among its members are a Member of Parliament from the governing Fidesz party and the president of the Alfa Alliance, a radical Hungarian pro-life group. The scientific society receives funding from the Hungarian Ministry of National Resources and is sponsored by at least four members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The meeting of the society was hosted by the National Institute for Family and Social Policy, a research center operated by the Hungarian government.
The unique style of political debate in Hungary was already given ample space on this blog in last week’s post about pro-government journalist Zsolt Bayer’s television show. Continuing what might end up an entire series, this post introduces another talk show, which, just like Bayer’s show, is also a regularly scheduled program on Echo Television. Continue reading
The following are excerpts from a broadcast seen on a government-friendly television station in Hungary on February 10, 2012. “Korrektúra” (Editing Proof) provides political commentary during its regularly scheduled 30-minute slot on Echo TV. Last week, the show’s three panelists discussed the hearing held by the European Parliament on the state of civil rights and democratic values in Hungary. Continue reading
March 1: update to the story (last section)
Upon Malév’s announcement of its bankruptcy on February 3, it was hard not to feel like being caught in an emergency drill. The future holds other, much more challenging defaults for the Hungarian people; air travel is too luxurious and its impact is too limited for the Malév failure to count for anything more than a practice round. Bets are either on BKV, the municipal transportation system in Budapest, or on MÁV, the Hungarian State Railway, but various municipal councils may also be the next to follow suit. These do not have business rivals to step into the void they leave behind, the next Hungarian bankruptcy story is therefore more likely to hold real dramatic potential. Which is not to say that the leaders of the country did not exploit the loss of the national airline for their political pursuing their goals, no matter how easy or difficult these losses would or could have been to avoid.
The artists of Budapest’s New Theater bid farewell to their audience in proper style: their last collaboration was a stage adaptation of Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain. Given the change of directors, the play will only be seen four times during the month of February. More important, however, is how life inside and outside the theater met through this choice: in the play, Hans Castorp’s suspension in philosophical contemplation comes to an abrupt interruption by political violence, essentially the same kind of violence that has shattered the company’s creative life.
As of February 1, Budapest’s New Theater is under the directorship of the Hungarian far-right. And while the message of the theater’s artists may have been too subtle, the anti-fascist protesters gathered outside the theater on the same day spoke out in much clearer terms against the political gains of far-right extremism. As if any further proof were required that fascism is more than just a fictional element in Hungarian public discourse, neo-nazi paramilitary groups disturbed the event by their counter-protest.
Marching in uniform, as part of a paramilitary formation, is no longer illegal in Hungary. As far-right internet portals report with glee – in posts dated Jan 27, though the judgment is from December - the Budapest Court of Appeals issued a clarification of the legal arguments behind the dispersal of the New Hungarian Guard, one of the paramilitary arms of Hungary’s far-right Jobbik party. What is at issue in the judgment, eventually, is the question of what makes the activities of the paramilitaries illegal, and, by extension, punishable by law: a previous interpretation of the law assumed that wearing the uniform of the dispersed organization and restaging the military formation characteristic of the group would also carry legal consequences.
At the urging of pro-government journalists and media owners whose ideological committment is well summarized here, on January 21 a mass demonstration was held in support of Viktor Orbán and his government. “Never has a crowd so sizable demonstrated in Hungary in favor of the government and its policies in living memory. Approximately 400,000 participated in the event held in peace and good spirits,” the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior said in its press release Saturday evening (in 2008, Fidesz estimated that 2 million people showed up at its rally, so this claim is somewhat puzzling). Hungarian MEPs of the European People’s Party also issued a statement thanking participants of the rally. “The mass mobilization of several hundreds of thousands was a worthy and forceful response to the campaign of disparagement by leftist forces,” they wrote.
Update to the post on Jan. 22, 2012: source and link to pictures added to ending paragraphs on previous marches of the New Hungarian Guard in the latter half of 2011.
For the last few days, one of the most popular pastimes in Hungary has been the compilation of lists ranking the lies told by the Hungarian prime minister to the European Parliament. Hungarians also compare and contrast Viktor Orbán’s distortions of the truth in the various speeches and press conferences he gave during his visit to Strasbourg on January 18, so that they can cast a vote on online forums on which one is the biggest lie of them all. Here, I only want to focus on one of Orbán’s lies: on his claims that his government put an end to the operations of paramilitary organizations in Hungary. Continue reading
On January 17, the European Commission launched accelerated infringement proceedings against Hungary over the independence of its central bank, the replacement of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Data Protection as well as over measures affecting the judiciary. The Commission first raised its objections to the laws before they were put to vote in the Hungarian parliament, but the Hungarian parliament passed them into law anyway. Hungary’s prime minister Orbán now promises to revise the laws so that they no longer violate EU law. His decision to announce this may have been helped by the fact that he must do so in order to start negotiations with the IMF about a loan. Of course it’s not like he has never reversed himself on his promises before.
Viktor Orbán in the European Parliament on January 18, 2012. Photo by MTI.
One of them featured the burning of the EU’s flag, another focused on Hungary’s colonization and a third pointed out never before seen international aggression. This weekend, three far-right protests opened a series of pro-government rallies in Hungary.
Hungary’s President Pál Schmitt is engulfed in a major scandal resulting in vocal calls for his resignation. As the Hungarian news magazine HVG first reported, Schmitt’s doctoral thesis (“The Analysis of the Program of Modern Era Olympic Games” - Az újkori olimpiai játékok programjának elemzése) appears to be in part a plagiarized translation and in another part a translated paraphrase of research conducted and funded by the International Olympic Committee’s Olympic Studies Center. Continue reading
Hungarians themselves may have been too scared to realize that, following their protest against the country’s new constitution, they were cast into the limelight of international attention. While less than a thousand politicians gathered to celebrate the new “fundamental law” in the Hungarian Opera House on January 2, as many as hundred thousand demonstrators were on hand to demand restoration of the Hungarian Republic.
What the protesters’ who surrounded the ornate neo-Renaissance building demands would not be too difficult to itemize: democracy, return to the rule of law, constitutional guarantees for fundamental rights, the independence of the judiciary, a reasonable economic policy, and an end to Hungary’s slide into authoritarianism. But who took to the streets on January 2 in Budapest? How did this group forge its political alliance and what internal dynamics came to shape its unity? The following are a few afterthoughts probing into what has thus far been a relatively monolithic story about last Monday’s protest: four accounts about the Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Beautiful face of the demonstration.
