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On Friday evening, a 20-year-old man was attacked in Bratislava (Pozsony), Slovakia. It is very likely that he was attacked because he spoke Hungarian, reported parameter.sk. The Hungarian Foreign Ministry is calling on Bratislava to thoroughly investigate the knife attack.
Four young people went out in the Slovakian capital and stopped at a fast food restaurant before going home. While they waited for their food, they talked to each other in Hungarian. Another young man then approached and questioned them as to why they were speaking Hungarian, to which the victim replied that it was because they were Hungarian, writes the portal. Reportedly, the man then became increasingly aggressive, pulled out a knife and tried to hold it to the 20-year-old’s neck, then cut him on the chin. The alleged attacker then disappeared from the scene. The injured man, who later reported the incident to the police, was treated in the emergency room, reads the article.
We cannot allow the country to return to the times when we did not dare to speak Hungarian on the streets of the Slovak capital, when fans or a student from Nitra (Nyitra) were beaten up because they were Hungarian,”
wrote the Hungarian Alliance, a political party in Slovakia for the ethnic Hungarian minority, on its social media page.
Levente Magyar, Parliamentary State Secretary and Deputy Minister at the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, also commented on the incident. “A young man was attacked in the center of Bratislava because he spoke in his mother tongue, Hungarian. More and more sources are confirming the anti-Hungarian motive,” he wrote on Facebook.
“In order to clarify what happened, I contacted my Slovak colleague Marek Eštok, the Slovak State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, whom I asked for a full and thorough investigation into the case, including possible motives. The State Secretary assured me of this and confirmed that the Slovak police are doing everything in their power to catch the perpetrator. We will not allow a despicable act to weaken the close co-operation between our two nations that has been built up over the last decade and a half, but
we will always and under all circumstances stand up for the safety and dignity of Hungarians,”
underlined the State Secretary.
Via parameter.sk, Featured image: Pixabay