Editor's Note: Yesterday, Pál Schmitt resigned for plagiarizing his dissertation in 1992. A few years ago, Ferenc Gyurcsány did not resign after lying to the Hungarian people. Hungarians all over the country protested for his resignation and many were beaten for exercising their democratic rights.
Everyone remembers the 2006 protests in Hungary against the socialist government of Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány. There were a series of anti-government protests all over Hungary. Most of the larger protests against Gyurcsány took place in Budapest. The protests were due to a leaked audio recording of a private speech by Gyurcsány. He confessed that his Socialist Party had lied to win the 2006 election and that his government had done nothing worth mentioning in the previous four years in power.
The short YouTube video above is an illustration of the level of violence that the Budapest police used against the protesters. Even after the unreal level of violence used by the police was discovered, Gyurcsány refused to resign. In the video, you can see the police patrolling down Váci street in downtown Budapest. They all rush a single bystander on one corner and viciously beat him to a pulp. Though the video is not very long, it looks as if the bystander was innocently standing around the corner when the police began to beat him. The level of violence used by the police was incredible.
There were reports that even tourists to Hungary that happened to be in the area of the protests were beaten. Old men, women and children and even a priest were beaten or shot by rubber bullets. The majority of the Budapest police officers that were at the protests wore masks to conceal their identities. Also, the officers whore no identification tags or numbers that could be used to identify them later on. Many police departments around the world make it mandatory for their officers to be identified in some manner.
After the protests in September of 2006, one Hungarian television program interviewed a former West German police officer who had extensive experience during protests in his country during the 1980's. He told the Hungarian presenter that never is his police experience did he see such violence used by the police against protesters. Currently, the Hungarian Defence Ministry is launching an investigation into the fact that the Budapest police had been supplied with ammunition and grenade launchers from the Hungarian Army during the 2006 protests. It is still unclear whether the transfer was legal or not.
Istvan
