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Hungary critic granted safe asylum

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Akos Kertesz, a prize-winning Hungarian writer, was granted political asylum in Canada last week after he claimed he was being persecuted in Hungary.

Mr Kertesz, 80, said he had been constantly harassed in his native country and attacked in the street after he wrote an open letter for US-based Hungarian language newspaper Amerikai Nepszava in which he said that Hungarians had not faced up to their Holocaust crimes.

In his letter, Mr Kertesz wrote: “The Hungarians remain responsible for the horrors of the Second World War, and the Holocaust, because they have not, in contrast to the Germans, ever confessed to their historical crimes.”

Mr Kertsz told Canadian authorities that the Hungarian media, backed by the far-right Jobbik party, had launched a campaign against him.

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