This translation of a petition demanding the expulsion of a founding member of Fidesz was sent to me by a friend. It speaks for itself, and tells you what is seen fit to print in Hungary. It is in effect a call for genocide against Roma. These animals must not exist. In any sense, says Bayer's article. I have featured him before.
György C. Kalman
To my non-Hungarian friends:
On January 5, 2013, a petition was launched (http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/zárják-ki-bayer-zsoltot.html), addressing Fidesz, the ruling party of Hungary. The appeal demands Fidesz to condemn and expel one of its prominent founding members, Zsolt Bayer.
Mr. Bayer is a senior columnist at Magyar Hírlap, a Hungarian daily, where he published an article on January 5, 2013 (http://www.magyarhirlap.hu/ki-ne-legyen), about a heinous offense that took place on New Year's Eve, where the offenders were allegedly of Gypsy (Roma) descent.
Mr. Bayer stated in his article:
"A significant part of the Gypsy population are unfit for coexistence. They are unable to live among humans. These Gypsies are animals, and they act like animals. They want to mate/rut whenever they see someone and with whoever they see. If they meet resistance, they kill. They defecate wherever and whenever they feel like it. If they feel obstructed, they kill. They want to get whatever they come across. If they do not get it immediately, they take it and they kill. These Gypsies are incapable of all human communication. Their animal skulls emit inarticulate sounds, and all they understand of this miserable world of theirs is violence. [...] Those animals must not exist. In any sense. This is what has to be solved immediately and by any means!"
The petition quotes his lines and continues:
"This petition with the signatures will be sent to the floor leader of Fidesz in the Hungarian Parliament and to the party leadership.
Zsolt Bayer, founding member of Fidesz, in his article quoted above, has made it clear that he harbours murderous anger toward the Romas ("a significant part of the Gypsy population", as he puts it), and he instigates hatred against them.
Both the ruling party, Fidesz, and their government have claimed on several occasions that they reject all forms of racism. The signatories demand that Fidesz immediately condemn and expel Zsolt Bayer, as a direct consequence of their earlier declarations."
12 comments:
Horrifying.
Been here before, haven't we? (Please excuse the following long quote from Goodbye to Berlin, but I see no other way to make the comparison explicit):
"
Coming into the living-room yesterday evening, I found Frl. Schroeder and Frl. Mayr lying flat on their stomachs with their ears pressed to the carpet. At intervals, they ex- changed grins of delight or joyfully pinched each other, with simultaneous exclamations of Ssh!
"Hark!" whispered Frl. Schroeder, "he's smashing all the furniture!"
"He's beating her black and blue!" exclaimed Frl. Mayr, in raptures.
"Bang! Just listen to that!"
"Ssh! Ssh!"
"Ssh!"
Frl. Schroeder was quite beside herself. When I asked what was the matter, she clambered to her feet, waddled forward and, taking me round the waist, danced a little waltz with me: "Herr Issyvoo! Herr Issyvoo! Herr Issyvoo!" until she was breathless.
"But whatever has happened?" I asked.
"Ssh!" commanded Frl. Mayr from the floor. "Ssh! They've started again!"
In the flat directly beneath ours lives a certain Frau Glanterneck. She is a Galician Jewess, in itself a reason why Frl. Mayr should be her enemy: for Frl. Mayr, needless to say, is an ardent Nazi. And, quite apart from this, it seems that Frau Glanterneck and Frl. Mayr once had words on the stairs about Frl. Mayr's yodelling. Frau Glanterneck, perhaps because she is a non-Aryan, said that she preferred the noises made by cats. Thereby, she insulted not merely Frl. Mayr, but all Bavarian, all German women: and it was Frl. Mayr's pleasant duty to avenge them.
About a fortnight ago, it became known among the neighbours that Frau Glanterneck, who is sixty years old and as ugly as a witch, had been advertising in the newspaper for a husband. What was more, an applicant had already appeared: a widowed butcher from Halle. He had seen Frau Glanterneck and was nevertheless prepared to marry her. Here was Frl. Mayr's chance. By roundabout enquiries, she discovered the butcher's name and address and, wrote him an anonymous letter. Was he aware that Frau Glanterneck had (a) bugs in her flat, (b) been arrested for fraud and released on the ground that she was insane, (c) leased out her own bedroom for immoral purposes, and (d) slept in the bed afterwards without changing the sheets? And now the butcher had arrived to confront Frau Glanterneck with the letter. One could hear both of them quite distinctly: the growling of the enraged Prussian and the shrill screaming of the Jewess. Now and then came the thud of a fist against wood and, occasionally, the crash of glass. The row lasted over an hour."
Thank you, Rachel. It is over twenty years ago since I read the Isherwood and had forgotten this. Yes, here we are again. The tune is never off the repertoire and has been proving ever more popular in recent years.
Madness is part of the human condition. Of that I am certain. Yesterday in Vienna a 51 year old 'local man' 'allegedly' attacked and pushed a 30-something Kenyan woman into the path of an oncoming U-bahn train. Fortunately 3 brave young men jumped onto the tracks and rescued the woman with 30 seconds to spare. The 'media' is trying to pass this incident off as an argument concerning the loudness of a mobile telephone conversation rather than it being another example of a racially motivated attack. The man has been charged with attempted murder. The woman has a compound fracture of her right leg.
So this is not an exceptional event, Gwilym? How would you describe the mood in Austria? I have some hope that the opposition to Orbán is beginning to unite in Hungary.
At the moment the whole of Austria is completely distracted by the frenetic debate via TV radio press and poster campaigns on the forthcoming volksbefragung (a kind of referendum) in 10 days time. In fact we received our opening mailshot today.The proposed constitutional change, I think it can be seen as that, could mean that Austria decides to have a professional army and to do away with national service. According to the media it's going to be neck and neck.
Obviously if the professional army backers won we would see an upsurge in military spending and closer ties to other EU armies and possibly eventually to NATO.
In a recent poll 80% of Austrians were worried about the rising crime rate and anything that smacks of law and order they would probably go for.
Vienna is a very cosmopolitan city and faces the usual frictions and problems in that respect although nothing like the same scale as N Ireland or Hungary. In 2014 there is a general elections. The current far right standing is about 25%. Their leader is calling for asylum seekers on hunger striker in a local church to be force fed and then shipped back to where they came from. You might like my poem today. It concerns the obdachlose (the homless) who live in a park a stone's throw from the state opera and the smart hotels.
Today's front page: Hungarian police have quickly captured and deported to Austria the alleged 'U6 sex-maniac', a 30-something Turk wanted in Vienna for sexually molesting and attacking women on the U6 line underground trains. The man's name was given as Mustafa A. Some other news items: the case involving a so-called far-right blog or website should reach a verdict later today. A 14-year old muslim girl jumped out of a 4th floor window because her parents were supposedly too strict. She was seriously injured. There's newspaper talk about the possibility of a re-trial in the case 50 football hooligans who got off in the first trial. The hooliganism was at a local derby and involved a lot of drunkeness, running on the pitch, and fireworks. I seem to remember the referee was abused. Rapid Vienna again!
Churchill said I may not agree with what you say but I will defend your right to say it. There is a trend here to curtail freedom of speech if it doesn't agree with the accepted view. You may recall David Irving getting 3 years for saying here what he would be free to say in the UK. Emails and phone calls are constantly monitored. Punishments are more severe here than in China. A man was sentenced to nine years for running a website and his two associates to 7 years. In the same news a cold blooded murderer of a young girl, who had dug her grave before he killed her, received 9 years. Major financial criminals appear to be untouchable. The obvious danger now is a polarisation of views which could lead to trouble on the streets. I hope not. But I think the ridiculously severe sentences may only serve to spark this. So what we have is almost the opposite side of the coin to what is going on in Hungary. These extremes, George, are for nix.
I linked to this post on Metafilter (http://www.metafilter.com/123750/Roma-in-Hungary-A-Hard-Life) to help spread the word about what is happening in Hungary. As a moderated forum there are usually some pretty good discussions about the topics, and web-links, on the site. It is mercifully free of the vile often found in the 'Comments' section of many Internet sites. There was also a lively discussion on Hari Kunzru's recent article in the New Yorker. (http://www.metafilter.com/123693/The-Frightening-Hungarian-Crackdown). (Apologies for the Metafilter shout-out, but it is one of the better places on the Internet to have intelligent discussions.)
Thank you for the sketch of Austria, Gwilym. I'll get over to yours for the poem. Austria seems a jumpy sort of place. 25% far right sounds very big to me. But then the Irving case, the monitored emails and phone calls, and the nine-year sentences you mention sound like a potentially polarised society at work. Really big money generally gets away with it, excpet for a few cases in the USA after 2008.
And thank you for the links to Metafilter, Pau. The comments at short but at least people aren't screaming at each other. The Great Patriots love nothing better than screaming at critics. They provide no proof, they just say everything reported is wrong. There is hardly anything factually wrong in the Hari Kunzru NYT article but they still scream.
This comment, from Gill failed to appear for some reason so she sent it as an email and asked me to add it to the others. Her comment follows:
My daughter who lives in Budapest, married to a well known Hungarian artist, has kept me informed of these worrying developments over recent years, and we have been amazed at how little coverage there's been in UK news and current affairs media.
Also in relation to cultural matters I have been surprised at lack of coverage here regarding the new powers of the MMA (Hungarian Academy of Arts) and its tighteneing grip on the cultural sector which led to the Mucsarnok director standing down, and provoked peaceful demonstrations by artists, educationalists and students, which will hopefully continue to voice protest in the coming months. This link - gives a good overview of the situation. http://art-leaks.org/2012/12/08/the-antidemocratic-makeover-of-the-cultural-scene-in-hungary/
Alsot this links.
http://yle.fi/uutiset/piano_legend_andras_schiff_no_return_to_hungary/6416053
And this review by Thomas Orszag-Land, of Paul Lendvai's new book Xenophobia and anit-Semitism in Hungary - time to despair? gives further insight into this troubling situation. http://www.ajr.org.uk/journal/issue.Jan13/article.11882
Thank you, in particular for the last link, Gill. I did mention the MMA affair and have tried to keep up with events. You are right that the western press hasn't taken much notice of developments in Hungary, but it is beginning to. See the Hari Kunzru article in the New York Times, referred to in an earlier post. I have a list of links to various articles from various sources.
I am going to be interviewed about the situation in Hungary on the Canadian CBC network this coming Wednesday at 2pm BST. I had a longer pre-interview telephone conversation with a journalist from CBC three days ago.
I am grateful for any further information about developments in Hungary. I have friends who send me items, and I can read both the foreign and Hungarian press on the internet, but since I do a great deal else I do miss things.
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