From the Liveblog of
Monday, August 22, 2016
Hungarian honorees return award given to ‘racist’ journalist
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleSeveral dozen recipients of a Hungarian state honor return their awards to protest a decision to bestow it on a prominent journalist accused of racism.
Zsolt Bayer is one of several Hungarian citizens handed an Order of Merit of the Knight’s Cross by President Janos Ader in a ceremony in Budapest on Saturday. But by this evening, 40 previous recipients of the decoration — including scientists, artists, and academics — had posted messages on social media saying they were returning their own awards in protest.
The head of Hungary’s largest Jewish organization Maszihisz, Andras Heisler, says he is also handing back his award as he does not want to belong to the same “group of people” as Bayer.
The journalist “is a racist, an anti-Semite, who pollutes Hungary with his incandescent Gypsy-hatred and nation-destroying ideas,” Heisler writes in a Facebook message.
MAZSIHISZ elnökké választásom előtt, 2011-ben kaptam meg „a zsidó közösség érdekében végzett sokéves társadalmi munkám…
Posted by Heisler András Mazsihisz elnök 2013-23 on Monday, August 22, 2016
Bayer, who is close to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, is a founder of a civil group that organizes massive pro-government street demonstrations. He also writes an occasional column in the right-wing Magyar Hirlap daily.
He has in the past compared the Roma people, Hungary’s 600,000- to 700,000-strong largest minority group, to “animals,” and written remarks seen as anti-Semitic.
— AFP
The Times of Israel Community.