US State Department report: Hungary is not without human rights problems

Budapest, March 4 (MTI) – Hungary is a multiparty parliamentary democracy, but is not without human rights problems, according to the US State Department’s 2016 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices released on Friday local time.

The report named the government’s handling of migrants and asylum-seekers as Hungary’s biggest human rights problem. It notes that there had been several allegations of physical abuse of migrants and asylum seekers, adding that the government had “resisted calls to order an independent investigation into the reports”.

The report also noted that civil and human rights groups had been critical of “the systematic erosion of the rule of law”, the “weakening of checks and balances, democratic institutions, and transparency” as well as the “intimidation of independent societal voices since 2010”.

It also named prison overcrowding, the physical abuse of inmates and detainees by prison staff, the government registration of religious groups, government corruption, “growing media concentration that restricted editorial independence” and governmental pressure on civil society among Hungary’s human rights problems.

The State Department also mentioned among the country’s human rights problems the issues of domestic violence against women and children, sexual harassment of women, anti-Semitism, the “inhuman treatment” and abuse of institutionalised children and adults with physical and mental disabilities along with the discrimination and social exclusion of Roma people.

Regarding judicial practices, the report said that while Hungary’s courts function independently, there had been attempts to exert political influence over the judiciary. It cited the government’s public criticism of a Veszprém court’s acquittal of the suspects in the 2010 red sludge disaster as an example of an attempt to influence a judicial decision.