The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report that the European Union had done “virtually nothing” to tackle problems concerning human rights laws and practices in Hungary.

It raised concern about the Hungary situation, stemming from “a raft of problematic laws and policies” initiated by the government, adding that “international calls to amend them have gone largely unheeded”.

The latest report by HRW on Hungary “utterly lacks credibility, states falsehoods and is an attempt to exercise pressure on the government,” Fidesz said.

“Hungary today is a democratic country where people do not get their eyes shot out at peaceful demonstrations and where the family tax allowance, pensions and wages are not cut overnight, as was the case during the Gyurcsány era.”

The opposition Dialogue for Hungary (PM) called on the government to “stop trampling on fundamental human rights” and suggested that the problems raised by HRW demonstrated that “the Orbán government has been taking an axe to human rights”.

The leftist Democratic Coalition (DK) called it unacceptable that the government “denies its own citizens European rights and values” and insisted that the European Court of Human Rights rules against the Hungarian government “almost every week” for violating people’s right to private property, mentioning lawsuits launched by tobacconists who lost their shops and people stripped of their disability pensions.

The opposition Socialist Party said that the report, which painted a “dark but vivid picture of human rights and the constitutional situation”, was “shameful” for the government.

The report confirmed what every democrat could already see: the government was curtailing people’s rights more and more, and increasingly trampling over such institutions that are normally enjoyed by citizens of free countries governed by the rule of law, the Socialists said.

Source www.hungarymatters.hu

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