For the Record

Hungary drudges through this toxic spill

I wish it were the awarding of its 14th Nobel Prize that is putting my country in the news these days.

Instead, Hungary is back on the world stage because of a disastrous chemical spill. An avalanche of a highly alkaline mud that could fill 440 Olympic-sized swimming pools has broken through the shoddy containment walls at an aluminum plant not far from the Lake Balaton region. As a result, nine people have died and 250 were injured. Wild and farm animals have perished, and lands and little summer gardens that were the villagers’ food and staple for winter have been ravished.

The 16th century castle in Devecser has surely seen a lot but now looks over hundreds of homes doomed to demolition. Kolontar, the village right under the alumina pond has even been compared to Chernobyl, the infamous home of a nuclear power plant disaster in Ukraine in 1986.

But a comparison of this sort only adds more damage to the grief: The red mud, as bad as it looks, is not highly radioactive, which was the case with Chernobyl. What makes the red sludge dangerous is alkali, which can dissolve skin as water dissolves soap. Eating up shoes and rubber boots, alkali left villagers with second- and third-degree burns.

Unfortunately, Alkali is all too familiar to Hungarians.

“Heartbroken maids would drink [alkali-rich] laundry detergent in the 19th century,” Dr. Zoltan Komaromi, secretary of the Hungarian Medical Chamber, said. “Alkali dissolves the esophagus immediately so drinking it used to be a popular way of committing suicide.”

Hungary grapples with free-press issues

When my editorial assistant, Mirjam Donath, traveled to her native Hungary recently, I asked her to look into some of the ethical issues faced by journalists there.

In a coincidental piece of timing, Hungary’s president this week signed into a law controversial media legislation that has drawn criticism from constitutional law experts and press freedom advocates. So Mirjam’s interviews in Hungary are all the more newsworthy now.

Over to Mirjam.

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If the man who introduced the ombudsman institution to Hungary says that the freedom of the Hungarian press is in danger, a journalist takes notice. And Laszlo Majtenyi, the first Freedom of Information Commissioner of Hungary and former president of the media supervisory authority (ORTT), warned me of just that during my recent visit to Budapest.

Following the first round of the Hungarian elections, analysts predicted that the two-thirds majority of the center-right party, Fidesz, which formed Hungary’s new government in April, was to have a slightly positive impact on financial markets. This unprecedented mandate, which gives the government the power to make even constitutional changes without the consent of the opposition, promised relatively quick implementation of economic reforms.

But as soon as the government came into power, first the Hungarian currency, the Forint, tumbled in early June. Then, the IMF suspended negotiations on Hungary’s funding program in July. And this week, President Pal Schmitt signed the most controversial part of the new media law package, which was condemned by constitutional experts in Hungary and press freedom watchdogs abroad.