Cross-examining in Hungary
By PETER BENENSON No one was more surprised than I when the Hungarian Legation telephoned one morn- ing to say that there was a visa waiting. Having said and written quite a number of harsh words about the methods of legal repression since the uprising, I felt it would be churlish to reject this offer to raise the frontier barrier; after all, a year ago, the Hungarian Government had refused even to admit the Secretary-General of the UN.
Since practically no foreigner speaks even a smattering of Magyar, the chances of a stranger discovering much for himself are remarkably slim. Of course, he can go round shop windows and then pUblish calculations of the number of work-hours it takes to buy a pound of sausages. According to his political orientation such figures, can be made to show equally well that there is grinding poverty or increasing plenty. Both de- ductions are, I fancy, equally true. But I had not come for any such purpose; I wanted to find out about those who were in prison for political reasons, how many of them had been tried since the uprising, how many were still being arrested.
These were not questions which could be answered by a glance around the streets, except to observe that Soviet soldiers were conspicuous by their absence, Hungarian uniformed police by their rarity and the policewomen by being allowed to wear both lipstick and hair to shoulder length. Arrests in political cases come within the province of AVO, the notorious secret police, of whom a great many people from your barber to your brother may be either in full or in part-time pay. To find out the answers, I had to rely in the main on the authorities for what they would, or, equally significantly, for what they would not, tell me.
It was something that the Government was pre- pared to allow me to meet a number of judges. True, some twenty-five judges have retired in Budapest alone during the last year rather than operate the system of so-called summary pro- cedure introduced soon after the events of October, 1956. Those who remain in judicial office either sympathise strongly with the present Government or else have too many children to feed to protest. It was scarcely likely that these judges would complain to me about the way trials were conducted, especially as I was accom- panied by an official from the Foreign Ministry and another from the Ministry of Justice. What I did learn from them was something which appears clearly enough if one studies the speeches of the Supreme Prosecutor, Szenasi : the judges have little scope.
The Supreme Prosecutor's Department is vir- tually a judicial system in itself. It has the power to arrest and the power to release. The Supreme Prosecutor is the only authority to whom one can appeal in case of unlawful arrest. His assistants conduct preliminary hearings of the accused, interview witnesses (not, I gather, in the accused's presence), assemble the documentary evidence and decide before which court the case will be heard.
The judge sits with two lay assessors who have an equal voice to his. In political cases the court is - known as a People's Court, and the two assessors are appointed especially for the job by the Prwsidium of the Republic. Since there are two lay assessors appointed by the local district council in all criminal cases—they sit for a month by rota—I was led to ask why there had to be different assessors for political cases. The reply was that 'these cases require special ex- perience.'
The Communist theory of law and justice is so different from that prevailing in the West that many comparisons are pointless. What does emerge from present-day conditions in Hungary, although there is a superficial normality about the shops, theatres and streets, is that the judicial system lags a good few rungs below the level of 'Socialist legality.' There is not much point plaguing Communist judges and lawyers with questions like 'Why don't you have a jury?' or 'Why does the prosecutor keep on harping on the accused's parentage, which has nothing what- ever to do with the case?' East is East and West is West. I did, however, repeatedly ask why the accused were not allowed the same sort of guarantees that prevail in Poland or, on paper at any rate, in the Soviet Union. The answer in- variably was an excuse about the difficult situa- tion in Hungary after the uprising.
My distinct impression from many conversa- tions was that the Hungarian Government is anxious to be readmitted to the 'family of nations.' Probably my visa and facilities were part and parcel of this policy, which in turn is linked to the Soviet wish for Summit talks. To some extent the Government has improved the judicial system during the last few months. On November 3 last year they did away with the summary procedure. Torture is now, thank goodness, almost a thing of the past—my infor- mation on this subject does not depend on official sources.
On the debit side, no one would tell me how many are still in prison. Although many of the rank and file were tried under summary pro- cedure—and an undiscoverable number executed —the leading figures in the uprising, Nagy, Bibo and General Maleter, are kept inaccessibly in de- tention. Rumours frequently report that they are on the point of being brought to trial. For my part, I very much doubt whether in the present atmosphere of increasing 'legality' it will be pos- sible to try them, at. all. The evidence, if it was permitted to emerge, could only embarrass Kadar and Muennich, who were both Nagy's colleagues in the October' days, as well as Mikoyan and Suslov, who flew from Moscow to approve Nagy's role.
On current showing, the less important figures of the uprising will gradually be, brought to trial in. batches. In each group will be one or two men who either committed or think it wise to admit having committed murder or looting during the rising. The prosecutor's immensely' long indict- ment will carefully link the politicians, writers and workers' leaders among the accused with these criminals and hence with the crimes. When the trial is complete, the newspapers will use the judgment to hammer the moral home : 'The men of October were nothing but thugs.'
It would be wrong to pass judgment on this type of trial without having heard all the evi- dence. One can only say that if the Hungarian Government expects the outside world to accept them as just it will have to allow foreign news- papermen and lawyers to hear the witnesses and see the documents. The Government has made a start by letting me in to see part of one trial; it is notnearly enough, but it is a beginning.
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