Justice Prevails Over Discrimination by Hungarian Municipalities

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” – On the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s speech the 444.hu news portal investigated what it is like for African-Americans to live in the United States today. We decided to show, using statistical data and the findings of international and domestic research projects and studies, what Romani people’s lives are like in present day Hungary.

The decision by the County Court (Törvényszék) of Miskolc to sentence nine Roma persons for racism „against Hungarians” for attacking the car of far-right activists in a small Hungarian town, Sajóbábony shows serious misunderstandings in how courts apply the law and demonstrates the wide-spread negative discrimination present in criminal sentencing.

The police failed to consider that the assault on the chairmen of the Raoul Wallenberg Association bears an anti-semitic bias and failed to investigate the incident as hate crime despite the fact that the law provides greater protection for the victims of hate crime. Apparently, the judicial practice presents deficiencies in this area.