This week, a 71 year old double amputee called Mrs. Lajos Nagy, but much more commonly referred to as Emma néni (Aunt Emma), passed away, after surviving an endless cycle of evictions and homelessness. According to a community group called the Hungarian Social Forum (Magyar Szociális Fórum – MSZF), she was evicted from the homeless shelter where she was staying, […]
It’s not very nice to look a gift horse in the mouth; especially not on Thanksgiving weekend! But considering that some of HFP’s readers are from Transylvania, the northwestern half of Romania that is home to 1.4 million ethnic Hungarians, I wanted to share with you two videos from Elections Canada, produced in advance of our federal vote scheduled for […]
I have written about Zsolt Bayer before in the HFP. Our readers may recall that he is a co-founder of the ruling Fidesz party and a prominent pro-Orbán publicist who recently asserted that the Syrian refugee crisis was a manufactured racial war, launched by “invisible hands,” in order to exterminate white people. I did not think that Mr. Bayer could […]
Péter Tarr is the deputy director of the right-leaning HírTV cable television news network, which was established in 2003 as Hungary’s first 24/7 news channel. Back in February, the station’s owner, Lajos Simicska, had a very public and profanity-laced falling out with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and after that happened, HírTV journalists and staff, once the media darlings of the […]
Hungarian society is terribly splintered, polarized and immersed in a poisonous public discourse based on fear. But can today’s news of the death of Árpád Göncz, by far the most popular President of Hungary, who served under three different governments and for a full decade, bring Hungarians together and put a brief damper on the spiteful political polemics? All the […]
The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe are pushing for the European Union to invoke the ominous Article 7 of the Lisbon Treaty against Hungary, but the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) has spoken up strongly in opposition of this initiative. If invoked, Article 7 would temporarily suspend some of the country’s voting rights in the EU, as punishment for […]
“Not a single refugee will step foot in here. This I can guarantee,” said Robert Kaliňák, Slovakia’s interior minister, on his way home from the EU summit called to deal with the most significant refugee crisis since World War II. Prime Minister Robert Fico’s populist left-wing government is obtaining technology from an American company called Hesco Bastion, which will allow it […]
Hungary’s ambassador to Canada, Bálint Ódor, used an article in the Montreal Gazette to try to rally Hungarian Canadians to defend the actions of his government in Budapest. There is no doubt that the unprecedented number of Syrian refugees transiting through Hungary was a serious strain for Hungarian authorities and especially for the charities and activists in Budapest who struggled […]
Violence broke out at the Röszke/Horgos border crossing between Hungary and Serbia today, after several hundred refugees attempted to break through the gate and border fence erected by Hungarian authorities. Hungary’s police force responded with tear gas and water cannons, injuring dozens of refugees who were treated by Serbian paramedics arriving to the border. Hungarian media reported that two children […]
Never has Canadian media followed developments in Hungary so closely since the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the historic influx of 38,000 Hungarian refugees to Canada. And Canadian media organizations, like the CBC, Radio Canada or the National Post, are not copy/pasting Associated Press reports, but are actually immersing themselves in the tragic events unfolding in Hungary, especially as the country […]
