Zsolt Semjén, Hungary’s Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP), was asked to comment on an idea that only those who pay taxes should be permitted to vote in elections. The hypothetical scenario was recently raised by Publicus, a major national polling firm, when respondents in a representative poll were asked about whether only those […]
Gábor Vona, leader of Hungary’s Jobbik party, is calling on Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government to issue a formal apology to the Roma minority. He accuses the ruling Fidesz party of deliberately eliminating any possibility for upward social mobility within the country’s largest minority group. Speaking in the town of Eger, a few days after he confirmed in a television […]
Miklós Beer is the Bishop of the Diocese of Vác, extending from Nógrád county bordering Slovakia down towards Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county in southeastern Hungary. Some 640,000 Hungarians (or 57% of the population) of this area identify as Roman Catholic in the towns covered by the diocese, which includes regions that are among the poorest in Hungary. Bishop Beer gave a fascinating interview […]
The Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a scathing statement on Hungary’s Orbán government, after the regime in Budapest decided to award rabidly racist columnist Zsolt Bayer, who has advocated for genocide against the Roma minority and has bemoaned that more Jews were not murdered in a pogrom in 1919/20, with a major national award. The Hungarian Free Press has long shared […]
Hungary’s utterly racist political journalist Zsolt Bayer has received the Order of Merit of the Knight’s Cross from the President of Hungary János Áder. Mr. Bayer is a founding member of the ruling Fidesz party and a friend of Viktor Orbán, the country’s authoritarian Prime Minister. (Read more here.) Mr. Bayer is a columnist for the rightwing daily Magyar Hírlap. […]
The Orbán government’s decision to award one of its own with a state medal–Fidesz founder and rabidly racist columnist Zsolt Bayer–has convinced a growing number of prominent Hungarians to return their state distinctions in protest. The message is clear and simple: if the singularly foul-mouthed Mr. Bayer can be recognized by the Orbán regime with the Hungarian Middle Cross–a publicist […]
Residents of Székesfehérvár—largely Hungarian citizens of Roma ethnicity—have turned to our organization for assistance in confronting their housing crisis. In three meetings in July, a total of thirty families asked for the Roma Parliament to represent them and advocate for their legal rights and interests. According to the families, there are at least 60-80 households, or about 500 individuals, currently […]
International Romani Day was first declared in 1990 to celebrate Roma culture and raise awareness of the issues facing Roma people and draw attention to discrimination directed at communities globally. Roma people were targeted for extermination by the Nazis in Europe, at least 200,000 were killed in concentration camps between 1939 and 1945. It is estimated that about a quarter […]
Panic broke out on Tuesday in the eastern Hungarian town of Tiszavasvári, with parents storming into the local school and kindergarten to take home children, as news spread that the local municipal government, led by far-right mayor Erik Fülöp, was planning to take Roma children into state care. According to official statistics, 9% of the town’s population of 12,840 is […]
During the last week of November, I received a phone call asking for me to attend a meeting at the office of the Honourary Consul General of Hungary in Vancouver, Canada. Dr. Csaba Latorcai, Deputy State Secretary for Priority Affairs from the Prime Minister’s Office in Hungary, requested a sit down meeting with me to discuss Hungarian Roma in Canada. […]
