The Pécs District Prosecutor’s Office has charged two young Hungarians with assault causing bodily harm motivated by hate. The young men physically assaulted two citizens of Yemen, one of whom was enrolled as a university student in Pécs, while the other studied in Szeged. The attack occurred in front of a commercial establishment in Pécs last summer, but it took until this month for authorities to determine that the incident qualified as a hate crime.
According to an account published this week on the 24.hu website, the two students were speaking with each other in Arabic, at which point they were verbally harassed by two young men on the bench. “Migrants, go home and get lost! In Hungary, speak in Hungarian!”–yelled the youth. As the students left, the two youth followed them. One of the students was grabbed and pushed to the ground. The other student was then assaulted, pushed to the ground and kicked repeatedly with steel toe boots by the assailants.
An investigation lasting several months determined the obvious: the young students were attacked because of their ethnicity. As such, the assailants are not only charged with assault causing bodily harm but with a hate crime as well.
Source: Hungarian Free Press
