Ethnic Discrimination and the War Against Terrorism: The Case of Hungary

Abstract

This essay examines ethnic data collection and ethnic discrimination (ethnicity-based selection and ethnic profiling) in the context of anti-terrorist law enforcement procedures. Part I consists of five sections about crucial general principles and background. Section 1 begins with the characteristics of anti-terror policing and security measures. Section 2 explicates the constitutional standards for how (general) police procedures might take into account ethno-racial features, leading into special topics such as the discretionary power of the police in inducing action, in particular, authorization for stop and searches (Section 3), and the practice of ethnicity-based selection and ethnic profiling (Section 4).These latter practices lead to ethnic discrimination, making it all the more important to examine the effectiveness of ethnic profiling in the fight against terrorism (Section 5). Part II moves on to discuss the legal framework within Hungary, a country in which the legal definition of membership in an ethnic group has had a long history of heated political debates, but until now, ethnic classification has arisen primarily in connection with positive discrimination within minority law and Diaspora law. Hungary’s data protection laws classify personal data concerning national and ethnic membership as special data (protected, among others, by the means of criminal law). That is to say, unless the law specifies otherwise, personal data concerning nationality and ethnicity cannot be processed without written consent from the person in question. The irony of the situation is that the law does not protect potential victims of discrimination; in fact, authorities have used these provisions to make an easy case for dismissing charges of ethnic discrimination. Traditionally, within Hungary, law enforcement methods based on ethnic selection have affected the Roma minority rather than the minute Muslim community. Still, as we shall see, the authorities have virtually unbounded discretion when it comes to stops and searches, and as a result, the possibility for misuse of power remains unhindered. In sum, it is argued that the Hungarian framework does not have any special regulations that came into effect specifically during the war against terrorism. Still, the police, the national security services and the border guards — authorities with an extraordinarily wide range of competences that mostly parallel one another — have unbounded discretion in initiating action, leaving wide open the possibility of ethnicity-based subject selection.