A client of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee has won a case against the Hungarian state before the European Court of Human Rights. A young Iraqi man separated from his family was denied food in a transit zone for eight days. After 10 months, he was released from the container-prison only because the government – following a court ruling – dismantled them.
A young Syrian woman fled both from the war and from forced marriage. She desperately needed help on several levels, yet she was locked up in Hungary. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in … Read more
The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Hungary arbitrarily detained two children who applied for asylum in 2016. The Hungarian Helsinki Committee represented the asylum-seeking children against the Hungarian state that violated their rights.
Another client of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee has won a case in Strasbourg. Hungarian police pushed an Iraqi Kurdish boy to Serbia without any investigation. The inhumane Hungarian regulations made this possible – which are in effect even today, despite several international and EU court rulings declaring them to be a severe violation of fundamental rights. The Hungarian state treats children in need of asylum this way.
Since 2017, the Hungarian National Penitentiary Administration ordered prisons to conduct the most common prison visits in groups where several detainees and their visitors are separated by a plastic partition, a so-called plexiglass wall, under control, regardless of their security classification, without an individual risk assessment. Any physical contact between detainees and their visitors is strictly prohibited. In October 2023, the European Court of Human Rights found that this general practice violates the right to respect for private and family life – Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Transit zones have been shut down for 3.5 years in Hungary, but this cruel detention regime has not disappeared without a trace and is still haunting the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Yesterday, the number of its judgments in which asylum seeker applicants won against Hungary, all successfully represented by the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, rose to ten.
Hungarian authorities forcibly transferred a Yemeni family of seven and an Afghan three-member family to Serbia in 2019. They all applied for asylum at Budapest Airport but were pushed out via the border fence. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg ruled today that the Hungarian state violated the prohibition of collective expulsions and inhuman or degrading treatment. The Hungarian Helsinki Committee represented the asylum seekers, including a child with Down’s syndrome, in the case.
The transit zones have been shut down for three and a half years, but this cruel detention regime did not disappear without a trace, still haunting the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. On … Read more
The state must not abandon victims of police ill-treatment, even if they are collectively expelled foreigners. Nor can it grant impunity to abusers in uniform, a Strasbourg Court judgment confirmed yesterday. Hungarian police officers had … Read more
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) found the detention of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee’s two asylum seeker clients unlawful in today’s judgement against Hungary. The young men, from Afghanistan and Algeria, were in asylum detention for five and two months, which was not justified for even a single day.
A 14-year-old asylum-seeking child was assaulted by field guards in Ásotthalom and thrown back to Serbia by Hungarian police. A 17-year-old asylum seeker was arbitrarily detained for three months. A 28-year-old torture victim asylum seeker was detained despite severe health problems. All three of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee’s clients appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, and all won. The Hungarian state violated their human rights and is obliged to pay just reparation.
Journalists from the independent Hungarian news portal Telex were blocked from interviewing government officials arriving at a government meeting because the building of the Prime Minister’s office was fenced off by a police cordon. After an unsuccessful complaint to the police, the journalists secured a court victory today with the help of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee’s lawyer. In today’s ruling, the Metropolitan Regional Court in Budapest confirmed that the measure was unnecessary, disproportionate, and violated the journalists’ right to freedom of expression.
On 23 March, the court annulled the earlier decision to withdraw Ms Gáborné Nagy’s international protection and ordered the authorities to start a new procedure. The judgement ruled that if the National Directorate-General for Aliens Policing (OIF) still wants to deprive her of her refugee status, it has to find properly founded, reasoned objections, and make them available to the person concerned so that she can express her views.
The Hungarian Helsinki Committee reached a milestone in our litigation struggle against Hungary’s indiscriminate and violent push-back policy applied at the Serbian-Hungarian border. In September 2022, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that it violates the prohibition of collective expulsions and the right to remedy. This is our second victory in Strasbourg concerning this unlawful practice, and it gives us hope for several similar pending cases – and reaching systemic change in this unfair policy.
In 2013, Dávid Vig, a Hungarian citizen, was subject to a police ID check and a search of his outer clothing during a cultural festival held at a community centre in Budapest. Nothing incriminating was … Read more
Another judgment has been delivered by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg due to unlawful detentions in the transit zone. The asylum seeking family from Iraq, four children and their parents were arbitrarily held by the Hungarian authorities for 136 days. The family was represented by the Hungarian Helsinki Committee.
Another judgment has been delivered by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg against Hungary due to unlawful detention of an asylum seeking family in the transit zone. Four Iraqi children and their parents were held by the Hungarian authorities for nearly five months. What is more, the mother was pregnant with their fifth child during their detention in the container camp at Tompa, Hungary. And yet, Hungarian authorities couldn’t care less. The family has been represented by the Hungarian Helsinki Committee.
The Hungarian Helsinki Committee released its documentary film By the Power of the Force on its YouTube channel. The subject of the film is the largely unpunished mass police violence of 2006 and its aftermath. The film by civil rights activists shows that the domestic judiciary still fails to prevent, detect and punish police violence to this day.
A special criminal trial has begun in the Pest Central District Court. The accused man, now 35 years old, was sexually molested by his priest several times since the age of 13. This counts as a crime, and amounts to sexual violence against a child. Yet the Catholic priest remained unpunished under secular criminal law. Meanwhile, Attila Pető, the former victim, is now being threatened by criminal sanction
‘God bless Hungary! I love Hungary and Hungarians. I have been waiting for this for two years and eight months. Thank you very much for accepting me and for granting me refugee status,’ said the sincerely shaken Abouzar Soltani on 18 August in the notes on his hearing when it was announced that he and his 12-year-old son Armin had finally received protection in Hungary. What follows is the story of what the Iranian clients of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee experienced, and the face that the Hungarian State shows to the persecuted.