Ferenc Koszeg

The departing depute of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee calls for provost duty regime change with the civil control of the armed forces.

© Dudás Szabolcs

How would you describe the two waves of street violence that Budapest has witnessed? A state of civil war? Or football hooliganism finding its way into political rallies?

What ever people want to think, it is neither civil war nor football hooliganism. I don't believe in such oversimplifications. After the September confrontations, I talked to several of the arrested at Venyige utca Prison. There were some with criminal passed, but even they were under arrest for minor crimes. I found - the statistics probably agree - that it wasn't hard-core criminals who were arrested. The police clashed with radical but small groups, who derived their power from the feeling that the largest opposition party was behind them.

That's an assumption, and Fidesz's leaders deny it.

Even after the first clashes, Viktor Orban described the mood as understandable. We should not misunderstand Imre Kerenyi, who said before the elections that if the left won, there would be a revolution.

What of the police actions? Ottilia Solt said at the time of the 1989/90 regime change that he bore prejudice against only one minority: the police.

It was Sandor Revesz who first wrote that the "police ethnicity" was particularly criminal: at least as shown by the number of prosecutions launched against them compared to the size of the group. The Hungarian Helsinki Committee issued a statement the day after the TV siege saying that the police on Szabadsag ter had been abandoned by their commanding officers. It is unbelievable that Budapest police chiefs were unable to move enough officers to the square to resist an attack mounted by some 300 people. As for what followed over the next two days and on 23 October, there was certainly a sense that the authorities were taking revenge.

How unexpected was the street violence? Were you expecting these autumn clashes when you wrote an essay over the summer about the failure of the law and order regime change?

It didn't surprise me especially. It followed naturally from what was said after the elections. But the regime change in the world of law and order has nothing to do with what we have seen. In the summer, I thought a wave of reforms was starting which would change the forces of law and order as well - I thought some kind of civil oversight of the police would be created. The English model is a good one: an independent body investigates complaints made against the police. Political influence is also significant: the minister can tell police what kinds of measures to take. Of course, neither the minister nor the prime minister can give an illegal order, but they can put a stop to police attempts to interpret the law for their own ends. Budapest's police chief has no right to ban a legal demonstration, and nor can he claim that the demonstration on Kossuth ter is a political campaigning event that does not come under the heading of the law on free assembly. It is not clear who would have had the right to call off the fireworks ahead of the weather catastrophe on 20 August, or who could have warned the crowds of the approaching storm.