Hungarian NGO Launches Freedom of Education Program

Lawyers from HCLU are defending a number of young activists who have recently been charged for occupying the headquarters of the governing party, FIDESZ and for blocking traffic around the Hungarian Parliament. The response by the police to the demonstrations was meant to instill fear and to scare people away from similar acts in the future.

The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU) is joining with a coalition of Hungarian NGOs are calling on domestic companies and Hungarian divisions of multinationals to take a stand against hate speech in Hungary. The NGOS are asking, among others, Vodafone and T-Com, FEDEX, IKEA and Procter and Gamble to reconsider advertising in a Hungarian newspaper which published an article talking about Romani people in unacceptably racist and prejudiced language.

On January 25th, the Monitoring Committee of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly requested that the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe's advisory body on constitutional matters review five further Acts, including the Act on the Hungarian Constitutional Court. The Hungarian Helsinki Committee, the HCLU and the Eötvös Károly Institute sent their opinion of the new Act on the Constitutional Court to the Venice Committee.