[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 175 (Wednesday, December 11, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Page S8805]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        HUMAN RIGHTS IN HUNGARY

  Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, earlier this year I chaired a Helsinki 
Commission hearing on the situation in Hungary. Today, I would like to 
revisit some of the issues addressed by our witnesses.
  Since the April 2010 elections, Hungary has undertaken the most 
dramatic legal transformation that Europe has seen in decades. A new 
Constitution was passed with votes of the ruling party alone, and even 
that has already been amended five times. More than 700 new laws have 
been passed, including laws on the media, religion, and civic 
associations. There is a new civil code and a new criminal code. There 
is an entirely new electoral framework. The magnitude and scope of 
these changes have understandably put Hungary under a microscope.
  At the Helsinki Commission's hearing in March, I examined concerns 
that these changes have undermined Hungary's system of democratic 
checks and balances, independence of the judiciary, and freedoms of the 
media and religion. I also received testimony about rising revisionism 
and extremism. I heard from Jozsef Szajer, a Member of the European 
Parliament who represented the Hungarian Government at the hearing. 
Princeton constitutional law expert Kim Lane Scheppelle, Dr. Paul 
Shapiro from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Sylvana Habdank-
Kolaczkowska from Freedom House presented compelling testimony.
  Unfortunately, developments in Hungary remain troubling.
  Even though Hungary's religion law was tweaked after the 
Constitutional Court struck down parts of it, it retains a 
discriminatory two-tier system. Moreover, the Parliament is empowered 
with the extraordinary and, for all practical purposes, unreviewable 
power to decide what is and what is not a religion.
  This month, the government announced it is launching an investigation 
into the Methodist Evangelical Church, a church persecuted during 
communist times. Today, the Methodist Evangelical Church is known for 
its outreach to Roma, work with the homeless and is one of the largest 
charitable organizations in Hungary. As I noted at the Helsinki 
Commission hearing in March, it is also one of the hundreds of 
religious groups stripped of official recognition after the passage of 
Hungary's new religion law.
  The church has now complied with submitting the necessary number of 
supporters required by the law and, as a reply, the government has 
announced an unidentified ``expert'' will conduct an investigation into 
the church's beliefs and tenets. This step only reinforces fears that 
parliamentary denial of recognition as a so-called ``Accepted Church'' 
opens the door for further repressive measures.
  Veneration of Hungary's wartime regent, Miklos Horthy, along with 
other anti-Semitic figures such as writer Jozsef Nyiro, continues. In 
November, a statue of Hungarian Jewish poet Miklos Radnoti, who was 
killed by Hungarian Nazis at the end of 1944, was rammed with a car and 
broken in half. At roughly the same time, extremists staged a book 
burning of his works along with other materials they called ``Zionist 
publications.'' At the beginning of December, two menorahs were 
vandalized in Budapest.
  Reflecting the climate of extremism, more than 160 Hungarian 
nationals have been found by Canada this year to have a well-founded 
fear of persecution. Almost all are Romani, but the refugees include an 
80-year-old award winning Hungarian Jewish writer who received death 
threats after writing about anti-Semitism in Hungary, and was stripped 
of his honorary citizenship of Budapest on an initiative from the far-
right Jobbik party, supported by the votes of the ruling Fidesz party.
  While there are many who suggest the real problem comes from the 
extremist opposition party Jobbik, and not the ruling government, it 
seems that some members of Fidesz have contributed to a rise in 
intolerance.
  I am particularly troubled that the government-created Media Council, 
consisting entirely of Fidesz delegated members, has threatened ATV--an 
independent television station--with punitive fines if it again 
characterizes Jobbik as extremist. If you can't even talk about what is 
extremist or anti-Semitic in Hungary without facing legal sanctions, 
how can you combat extremism and anti-Semitism? Moreover, this decision 
serves to protect Jobbik from critical debate in the advance of next 
year's elections. Why?
  Other new measures further stifle free speech.
  Unfortunately, and somewhat shockingly, last month Hungary amended 
its defamation law to allow for the imposition of prison terms up to 3 
years.
  The imposition of jail time for speech offenses was a hallmark of the 
communist era. During the post-communist transition, the Helsinki 
Commission consistently urged OSCE countries to repeal criminal 
defamation and insult laws entirely. In 2004, for example, the Helsinki 
Commission wrote to Minister of Justice Peter Barandy regarding the 
criminal convictions of Andras Bencsik and Laszlo Attila Bertok.
  This new law, raced through under an expedited procedure in the wake 
of a bi-election controversy in which allegations of voter manipulation 
were traded, was quickly criticized by the OSCE representative on 
Freedom of the Media. I share her concerns that these changes to the 
criminal code may lead to the silencing of critical or differing views 
in society and are inconsistent with OSCE commitments.
  Hungary was once held up as a model of peaceful democratic transition 
and is situated in a region of Europe where the beacon of freedom is 
still sought by many today. I hope Hungary will return to a leadership 
role in the protection of human rights and the promotion of democracy.

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