Fidesz slams Romanian top court’s rejection of ethnic Hungarians’ appeals

Fidesz MP István Bajkai and Zoltán Lomnici, head of the Human Dignity Council civil group, on Wednesday slammed as “unacceptable” the Romanian supreme court’s rejection of the appeals of two ethnic Hungarians sentenced to prison for an attempted bomb attack in 2015.

István Beke, a local leader of the self-defined radical nationalist Sixty-Four Counties Youth Movement (HVIM), and Zoltán Szőcs, the movement’s Transylvanian leader, were each sentenced to five years in prison for what the Romanian authorities saw as an attempt to detonate a home-made explosive device at a parade on Romania’s national holiday on December 1, 2015. The authorities charged them based on intercepted phone conversations and petards found at Beke’s home.

“Transylvania’s native Hungarian minority has been trying to survive in its homeland for a hundred years in the face of oppression and constant intimidation and persecution,” Bajkai and Lomnici said in a statement.

“But in the midst of all the human rights violations, the decision issued by the Romanian supreme court yesterday still counts as a sad milestone.”