January 20th, 2012

Freedom House says Hungary poses “most serious problem” in region

Hungary has retained its “free” rating, however, it poses “the most serious problem in Central Europe”, US-based human rights watchdog Freedom House said in its annual report released on Thursday.

On a scale of 1 to 7, Hungary was given 1, the top score, for political rights, but it has slipped to 2 in the civil freedom rights category. Authors of the report justified the downgrade by contested constitutional and legal changes, which are “widely seen as threats to press freedom, judicial independence, and political pluralism”.

According to the report, Hungary, similarly to Ukraine, South Africa and Turkey, was regarded as an “important success story” for democratic development until recently, but “now, increasingly, the democratic credentials of each [country] is coming under question”.

In FH’s rating system, countries are considered “free” in the 1-2.5 range. According to the watchdog, free countries have an open political competition, civil freedom rights are respected there, civil society is active and the media is independent.

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19 Comments

  1. zsuysa says:

    One wonders where the US would be???

  2. Leto says:

    It goes without saying that democrats are very worried now since there’s an anti-Semitic, Fascist government in power which makes a fuss with the alliance of the absolutely democratic European Committe and the International Monetary Fund. When the friends of these democrats in Hungary won the 2006 elections with a bit of creative accounting, with a little bit of help from the friends, and with a bit of an alternative interpretation of reality (using the very words of a true democrat: “we lied in the morning, during the day and in the evening”) and their police intimidated, tortured and beat up people then civil freedom rights were widely seen just fine.

    • Leto says:

      Correction: Some democratic friends of the true (that is postcommie) Hungarian democrats justly blamed the police terror on the irresponsible attitudes of the opposition and this led to a temporary Hungary’s dowgrading on the scale of the democracy gaugers. Mayor Demszky was also happy (remember those false teeth he kept showing off?) when he managed to keep his seat. Polls showed that wouldn’t have been possible without the rioters.

      • MagyarViking says:

        So now ‘leto’ has a problem that the evaluation of Freedom House was lowered also for 2006?

        When ‘leto’ is proven lying, he claims the opposite of what he originally claimed and make that into a new ‘TRUTH’

        A True Populist, or in plain English>
        * An animal without any traceable proof of a spine

        I let this site`s zoologists elaborate on the proper name for that creature

      • American in Budapest says:

        There was no police terror under the previous administration.

        You can repeat your claim as often as you want, but that doesn’t make it true.

  3. MagyarViking says:

    Leto says:
    January 20, 2012 at 9:02 pm

    then civil freedom rights were widely seen just fine

    Why is ‘leto’ lying, when it is so easy to show the truth?

    “Following the highly contested April elections, the divide between the government and the opposition widened even further. The violent events of September and October, a level of unrest unseen since 1956, finally highlighted the cracks in the country’s democratic consensus. Owing to the questionable handling of the riots by the government and irresponsible attitudes by a majority of the opposition during autumn 2006, Hungary’s rating for national democratic governance falls to 2.25″
    (-http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/publisher,FREEHOU,ANNUALREPORT,HUN,4756ad5727,0.html)

    So, Freedom House took down its assessment of Hungary for 2006 due to the riots, so ‘leto’ lied again
    As Simple As That!

  4. Lex says:

    Freedom House is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID, the folks who cobble together color revolutions, the preferred way in the 21st century for the CIA to overthrow governments.
    It is a Soros project. Freedom House is “funded by both the US government and Soros to provide support to pro-Western opposition movements

  5. AK says:

    Hungary is even more “Serious” than Belarus?

    • nimh says:

      This is what the first paragraph of the article actually says: “Hungary has retained its “free” rating, however, it poses “the most serious problem in Central Europe”, US-based human rights watchdog Freedom House said in its annual report released on Thursday.”

      So what are you saying – that you consider Belarus to be part of “Central Europe”?

  6. GuessWho says:

    Freedom House? You mean finally, they managed to google Hungary? Not bad for a US outfit :)

    • American in Budapest says:

      Freedom House has a good reputation Let me remind that the US has far better universities than Hungary. In fact, US universities dominate the international rankings.

      American society is dynamic and leaves a bunch of stodgy Hungarian academics in the dust …

  7. Csaba K. Zoltani says:

    An antidote for the Hungary bashing is this article that is journalism, not propagandizing:

    http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=254396

  8. rj says:

    America also has the largest Prison Population in the world.

  9. Curious George says:

    @rj – yes, American criminals end up in prison. Where do Hungarian criminals end up? Parliament? I’m just curious.

    • rj says:

      American Criminals are all over Wall street so what is your point? There is no nation on earth that is more morally bankrupt than the USA.

  10. Inconspicuous says:

    @Incognito. White trenchcoat, blue sunglasses, lederhosen, Doc Martens, a panama hat, and a sun tan.
    Is this a dry run for the bum-bangers jamboree in Budapest later this year?