Former Hungarian President Áder: ‘Apology, forgiveness sign of strength, not weakness’

Apology and forgiveness are signs of strength rather than weakness, and Serbians and Hungarians need their strength as well as each other, former president János Áder said in Subotica (Szabadka) on Wednesday, upon receiving the Pásztor István Award.

The Pásztor István Award, named after the leader of the Association of Vojvodina Hungarians who died one year ago, will be handed to a Serbian and a Hungarian each year for their work to maintain good relations between the two nations by promoting the welfare of the minorities in each country. The first award was given to Áder and former Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic on the first anniversary of Pásztor’s death, on Wednesday.

Photo: MTI/Molnár Edvárd

In his acceptance speech, Áder recalled a commemoration in 2013, when he and Nikolic, as presidents, honoured together the memory of the Serb and Hungarian victims of the Second World War. “We have apologised to the generations bearing the trauma of those events on their shoulders. We called sin by its name but erased forever the concept of collective culpability from our vocabularies.

We stepped away from the vicious circle of stigmatisation, passion … vengeance and revenge,” Áder said. Nikolic said that he and Áder had “led Serbs and Hungarians to historic peace together”. They had both faced backlash for that, “but those who can’t take criticism for the greater good are not fit for the office,” Nikolic said.

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