Responding to a proposal to erect a statue to the victims of police brutality in 2006, a leftwing journalist suggests that police officers wounded by rioters would also deserve a statue in Budapest. READ MORE
Pro-government film producer Gábor Kálomista’s new thriller on the street clashes and brutal police clampdown before and on the anniversary of the 1956 revolution in 2006 is proving a great success among the pro-government public. 15 years after the controversial events took place with Ferenc Gyurcsány as Prime Minister, remembering those days has been one of the main themes of this year’s celebration of the anniversary on the government side. (For the 2006 riots, see e.g., BudaPost, September 5, 2011.) READ MORE
Commentators disagree on the sentences handed down to police commanders for mishandling political violence in September 2006. Leftist authors celebrate the ruling as proof that the police were innocent, while conservatives find the blame apportioned astonishingly light. READ MORE
As former PM Gyurcsány denies having leaked his famous “lie-speech”, left-wing columnists suggest that the publication of the tapes and even the riots which followed could have been orchestrated by Fidesz politicians. Pro-government commentators, on the other hand, contend that Gyurcsány’s involvement in the leak is beyond doubt. READ MORE
A right-wing commentator contends that renewed speculation about who leaked former PM Gyurcsány’s 2006 “lie-speech,” is actually part of Mr Gyurcsány’s strategy to blackmail the left-wing opposition and thereby secure himself a place in a future anti-Orbán coalition. READ MORE
A pro-government commentator welcomes a decision by the Prosecutor’s Office to prosecute former Budapest police chief Péter Gergényi for his involvement in the 2006 riots, but finds it problematic that it took more than six years to bring the case to court. READ MORE
A pro-government commentator accuses DK vice chairman Debreczeni of constructing a propagandist conspiracy theory in order to save the image of his boss, former PM Gyurcsány in a book on the 2006 riots. READ MORE
A right-wing columnist wonders why the police investigates journalists who identified the policemen beating up protesters during the 2006 riots, instead of prosecuting the violent perpetrators who, she believes, acted on the orders of Ferenc Gyurcsány’s left-wing government. READ MORE