Kover addresses 1956 commemoration in Paris

Paris (MTI) – House Speaker Laszlo Kover on Monday addressed a commemoration in Paris marking the anniversary of Hungary’s failed anti-Soviet revolution in 1956.

At the ceremony, held in the Hungarian Institute, Kover said that the victory of the revolution could be completed “by present-day Hungarians”.

Kover insisted that “the ties of national freedom and those of social justice could again be intertwined” and said that it was only those “strong ties” that can “integrate the Hungarian nation and reinforce the Hungarian state”. Those goals, Kover said, were served by Hungary’s regime change in 1990, and are among the commitments of its incumbent government.

Referring to suggestions of a comparison between Hungarians fleeing the country after the 1956 revolution and illegal migrants of today, Kover said that such assumptions were “historically mistaken, politically false and deeply insulting for Hungarians”. He insisted that Hungarian refugees had been “European victims who shared the values of Euro-Atlantic civilisation, who were ready to integrate into recipient societies from Europe through the US and Australia, and who did not violate the laws of those countries but fully abode by them”.