Hungary

The Holy See reported the burglary of a church in which the communion bread was desecrated.

The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported a series of physical assaults, causing serious injuries to two Roma men that were carried out by a group using baseball bats. The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union reported a further physical assault.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Action and Protection Foundation and the Federation of Jewish Communities in Hungary (MAZSIHISZ) reported one incident in which approximately 50 gravestones were broken or knocked down and an incident of damage to a Holocaust memorial on the Danube. The Action and Protection Foundation reported an attempt to run over a man visibly identifiable as Jewish; 17 incidents of graffiti, and a further 4 incidents of damage to property; one incident of threat in which a man was threatened with a knife after intervening to stop graffiti being painted on a memorial; and one incident of attempted arson. The Action and Protection Foundation and MAZSIHISZ reported one incident in which graves were covered with anti-Semitic graffiti and two incidents of threats.

The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union and the Háttér Society reported a threat against a gay man in connection with the Budapest Pride event. The Háttér Society reported a further five physical assaults, four of which were against gay men, including one against a gay couple and one of which involved an attack by a group against several people who were participating in the Budapest Pride event.

World Without Nazism reported one incident of racist graffiti.

The Háttér Society reported that the hate crime co-ordinator at the National Police Headquarters initiated regular meetings between the police and civil society organizations to discuss police responses to hate crime cases. Two meetings were held in 2014. In September 2014 the Working Group Against Hate Crimes, a coalition made up of Amnesty International Hungary, the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, the Háttér Society, the Legal Defence Bureau for National and Ethnic Minorities and the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, published a report describing 24 hate crime cases in Hungary from 2009 to 2013 and police responses to them. The report was widely quoted in the media and was discussed at the February 2015 meeting of the Human Rights Roundtable, a government consultation mechanism for human rights groups.