introduction of the country’s toughest legislation against hate speech since the collapse of Communism.
The amendment came following weeks of verbal attacks against Jews and Gypsies, who prefer to be known as Roma. Under the new law, a person who publicly incites hatred toward any nation, or national, ethnic, racial or religious group, is considered to have committed a crime punishable by up to three years in prison.
In addition someone who "publicly insults the dignity of a person because of his or her national, racial, ethnic or religious" affiliation could be found guilty of a misdemeanor and be sentenced to up to two years imprisonment.
The debate over hate speech and freedom of expression heated up last month after an appeal court overturned an 18-month prison sentence against Reformed Pastor Lorant Hegedus, a former vice president of the far right Hungarian-Justice and Life Party, MIEP.
CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLE
In an article published last year he had urged the Hungarian society to "segregate Jews before they segregate you." More recently a prominent attorney defending racist skinheads asked the presiding judge whether she was Jewish or of a Jewish background.
The Roma community has also been suffering. In the town of Szeged a court reduced the compensation claimed by two Gypsy brothers who served 15 months in jail for a murder they did not commit.
The court ruled the brothers were only entitled to just over $5,000 because they were in its words "personalities…more primitive than the average."
SURVIVORS PLEASED
79-year old Erno Lazarovits, a Holocaust survivor and Foreign Relations Director of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Hungary, told BosNewsLife he was pleased that Hungary’s parliamentarians banned hate speech ahead of the country’s European Union entry in May.
"We are survivors of the Holocaust. And we are very happy that the government at last has accepted this law. We are very very glad and very happy," he said.
However he is disappointed that the law was accepted by only a slim majority of just four votes with 184 parliamentarians saying yes, while 180 said no.
COUNTRY DIVIDED
Lazarovits said it shows the country is divided between the Socialist-led Government coalition, which backed the legislation, and the conservative opposition that apparently mainly opposed it.
Yet even several liberal politicians of the junior coalition party Alliance of Free Democrats voted against the legislation, saying it restricts freedom of opinion.
But Lazarovits argues that hate speech only takes away freedom. He now hopes that people responsible for hate crimes will be punished as in other countries such as Germany.
JAIL TERMS
"I hope that will be executed like it has to be in practice [so] that people who are enlarging such neo-Nazi, anti Semitism feelings will not only be told: "don’t do that in the future," but that they will be put in jail," Lazarovits added.
The President of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Hungary, Andras Heisler, urged Christians to help in the fight against hatred. He told the Hungarian News Agency MTI that "the holiday of light" must reach all churches and denominations.
Leaders of Hungarian churches and denominations must "uphold the light and hold it high" in order to obliterate the shadows of hate incitement and exclusion in Hungarian society, he was quoted as saying after a meeting with Hungary’s president and clergy.
HUNGARIAN CHURCHES
President Ferenc Madl received the leaders of the Hungarian historical churches and denominations Tuesday December 9 to mark Advent and the forthcoming Hanukkah, a Jewish holiday.
The fight against anti Semitism and hate speech is a sensitive topic in Hungary, which was a close ally of Nazi Germany during most of World War Two. At least 600-thousand Hungarian Jews were massacred during that period.
