HUNGARY: Civil society organisations condemn atrocities in Budapest

Extreme right wingers together with football hooligans have rallied the streets of Budapest which escalated in the actual occupation and the near burning of the state television building in downtown Budapest on 19 September. The protests began after a tape has been made public in which socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany admitted that he lied to the voters to win re-election in April 2006. Although the protests, which call upon the Prime Minister to resign from his post, have wound down since, the violence in the streets have shocked society which has not seen such scenes for fifty years. Many civil society organisations including a joint declaration by the 11 NGOs sitting in the Hungarian Economic and Social Council have issued and signed different petitions calling for peace and urging protesters to express their opinion and demonstrate peacefully, within constitutional frames. The demonstrations will likely to stay in their current calmed format but intensified in the upcoming celebration of the 50th anniversary of the 1956 anti-communist revolution in Hungary on 23 October, 2006.