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January 4, 2000
His Excellency Viktor Orban
Prime Minister
Republic of Hungary
Via Fax: 011-36-1-268-3050
Your Excellency,
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ ) is greatly alarmed by a December
27 grenade attack near the offices of the independent weekly Elet es
Irodalom in Budapest. The newspaper's editors suspect the attack came in
reprisal for its recent court victory in a libel suit that Your Excellency and
Fidesz, the main governing party, filed against it in October.
At around 6:45 p.m., a Yugoslav-made hand grenade was hurled into a courtyard
outside the offices of Elet es Irodalom, shattering office and car
windows. No one was injured. A surveillance camera recording of the incident
showed an unidentified man climbing out of a car, tossing the grenade into the
courtyard, and driving away.
In Your Excellency's lawsuit, you demanded that Elet es Irodalom
retract its published allegations that your party had engaged in corrupt business
practices. Eva Vajda, who authored the August 20 article, focused on charges that
your family had benefited financially from the privatization of a mining company,
and that other Fidesz members had enriched themselves from sales of public
buildings in the early 1990s.
On October 8, a lower court ordered the weekly to print a retraction. An
appellate court dismissed the verdict on December 14. Meanwhile, the Fidesz
party has filed a new case on your behalf against Elet es Irodalom for a
November 5 article on the same mining scandal.
Police also recently concluded a criminal investigation against Ms. Vajda and
her colleagues for allegedly breaching the country's banking secrecy laws in
their coverage of the so-called VIP list scandal at Postabank last year. Between
April and June 1999, the journalists published a series of articles detailing how
the now state-controlled Postabank had provided preferential loans and accounts
to a long list of "VIPs," including a number of public officials and celebrities.
The practice was blamed for the bank's near collapse in 1998, prompting a
government bailout. Police questioned the journalists, but failed to find
sufficient evidence to press charges.
As a nonpartisan organization of journalists dedicated to defending the
rights of our colleagues around the world, CPJ is outraged by the grenade attack
against Elet es Irodalom, the latest and most alarming in a pattern of
attacks against the weekly in retaliation for its work. We remind you of your
government's international commitments to safeguard the rights of journalists to
practice their profession freely and safely. We urge you to investigate this
attack, and to review all of your country's laws that inhibit the free practice
of journalism.
Thank you for your attention. We await your comments.
Sincerely,
Ann K. Cooper
Executive Director
Join CPJ in
Protesting Attacks on the Press in Hungary
Send a letter to:
His Excellency Viktor Orban
Prime Minister
Republic of Hungary
Via Fax: 011-36-1-268-3050
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