Nothing Came of Challenging the Beneš Decrees: Police Dropped the Case

Translation of an article originally published in Hungarian by Magyar Jelen on March 6, 2026 by Éva Remenyiczki.

Police dismissed a criminal complaint that János Fiala-Butora, Örs Orosz, and Attila Stubendek had filed against themselves for publicly challenging the Beneš Decrees. The authorities ruled that freedom of expression takes precedence over a Criminal Code provision that allows for sentences of up to six months in prison for anyone who questions the former president's decrees, according to Paraméter, a Hungarian-language news outlet in Slovakia.

Lawyer and human rights expert János Fiala-Butora and Örs Orosz, a member of the Hungarian Alliance (Magyar Szövetség, the main ethnic Hungarian party in Slovakia), held a Friday morning press conference and announced that police in Komárom had dismissed the complaint they had filed against themselves in January for challenging the Beneš Decrees.¹ Speaking at the press conference at the party's Pozsony headquarters, Fiala-Butora stated that the police had provided a detailed justification for dismissing the complaint. The ruling held that the relevant passage of the Criminal Code does not make clear what conduct the authorities would actually be required to sanction. "The investigator wrote that it was up to him to figure out what the crime was even supposed to be. But that is not an acceptable way to conduct proceedings," the lawyer quoted from the police ruling. The ruling also noted that freedom of expression enjoys constitutional protection and therefore takes precedence over the Criminal Code.

The Police See It One Way. The Government Sees It Another

The outlet also noted that Fiala-Butora and his colleagues had challenged the Beneš Decrees through a petition that put them at odds with a resolution passed by the Slovak government and parliament declaring the presidential decrees beyond question. The petition gathered more than 8,000 signatures. The investigator concluded that the petition merely presented well-established historical facts. "We agree. These are indeed well-established facts. The problem is that the government and parliament are making claims that directly contradict those facts. So if our statements reflect what is historically known, then their statements are false. The investigating officer has now confirmed as much," the lawyer pointed out. He stressed that with this ruling, the state's own institutions had effectively acknowledged that the government's position stands on shaky ground. "We didn't even expect this kind of success," he added. 

He then observed that the government's original aim had been to keep the decrees out of public debate, and instead the issue had become a central topic of national conversation.

"The government blundered badly," he declared. He then noted that in principle, the Komárom prosecutor's office could still overturn the ruling by April 4th, and the prosecutor general's office would still have that option after that date, though to their knowledge the current ruling had been reached in consultation with the prosecutors.

The Slovak Head of State Washes His Hands of It

According to the Paraméter article, the lawyer also noted that they had sent the petition to the head of state and to parliamentary leadership, and had proposed concrete steps to address the issue, including halting ongoing property confiscations and establishing an investigative commission. "So far, the only response we have received is from President Peter Pellegrini. He said he lacked the authority to establish an investigative commission, which is rather odd, since during the presidential runoff he himself declared that he would establish precisely such a commission," he pointed out.

Both Fiala-Butora and Orosz emphasized that beyond the complaint itself, an ongoing problem remains. Land seizures carried out under the decrees continue to this day. They also noted that recently, property belonging to ethnic Hungarians and Germans has been transferred to state ownership not only on the basis of historical confiscation orders but also by invoking alleged deportation lists. They stressed that thousands of such cases may be pending.

The Safety Vest Protest

Fiala-Butora recalled that on January 30th, at a demonstration in Pozsony organized against the Beneš Decrees, Örs Orosz was detained by police because he was wearing a high-visibility vest of the sort worn by construction workers, bearing the words "I challenge the Beneš Decrees." Orosz was held at the police station until the demonstration ended. He filed a formal complaint over the incident, as did the rally's organizers. The investigation into the matter is ongoing. The lawyer noted that the case also matters because Slovakia's assembly law is outdated and does not clearly define what authority it grants to police officers at public gatherings. "This opens the door to arbitrary interference by officers," he stressed, adding that police routinely abuse that leeway.

The news outlet also produced a video report on the demonstration mentioned above:

¹ The Beneš Decrees were post–World War II measures issued by Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš that imposed collective punishment on entire ethnic communities regardless of individual conduct. The decrees authorized the expulsion and dispossession of approximately three million Sudeten Germans and several hundred thousand ethnic Hungarians, communities rooted in the region for over a thousand years, whose properties and livelihoods were seized overnight and without compensation. The decrees have never been formally annulled and, as this article documents, continue to serve as the legal basis for active property confiscations to this day. They remain a largely unresolved injustice of the postwar European order.

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