One of the most important requirements for the struggle against antisemitism
is an exact awareness of the situation, that is, an investigation of the actual
prevalence of antisemitism. Therefore, one of Action and Protection
Foundation’s goals is contending with the lack of knowledge about this issue.
The resources include a continuous and professionally valid monitoring
activity, since it is impossible to provide real protection for the community
without collecting and analyzing the actual information. We publish the results
of the monitoring in the Foundation’s monthly reports.
In this volume, we summarize the results for the first year from May 2013 to April
2014.
The report deals with two forms of behaviour: antisemitic hate crimes,
and hate motivated incidents. In the report, they are both referred to as “hate
incidents”. An important criterion for both is an identifiable antisemitic
motivation when the act is committed.
Our volume will detail Action and Protection Foundation’s manifold
activities and will introduce the legal background. This will be done by
discussing legal regulations as well as the application of the law. In the
first aspect, the volume will detail the Hungarian regulatory framework that currently
provides the basis for combating hate actions. The second part of this section
will explain the lack of timely legal action typical for these kinds of crimes
and the actual use of the existing law. When analyzing the above, we can see
that although the legal framework should be enough to effectively combat
against hate crimes, many deficiencies are experienced in the course of law
enforcement because such regulations and laws are rarely cited by judges in
court.
Various resources should be used to monitor antisemitic hate crimes
extensively. Besides registering events, their various attributes should be
reviewed as well. After summarizing the monthly report data in our annual
report, we have analyzed the events by incident type, victims and perpetrators,
and levels of organization.
In the period between May 2013 and April 2014, the Foundation identified
57 antisemitic hate actions. In the period analyzed, the number shows a
decreasing number of these incidents. Of the events registered, 5 can be
categorized as assaults, 10 as defacement of property, 4 as threats and 38 as hate
speech. Nearly two-thirds of hate actions (37 cases) took place in the capital
city of Budapest. The vast majority of the identified perpetrators were male.
As for the hate actions against persons, the victims were mostly men as well.
Two-thirds of the registered hate actions were spontaneous while one-third was
organized. A large number of hate actions can be traced to Jobbik, especially
the organized ones.
