The Hungarian prime minister attended the funeral of Miklos Duray on Tuesday in Lucenec, Slovakia.

PM Orban had earlier expressed his condolences to the bereaved family in a letter on the recent death of Miklos Duray, an ethnic Hungarian politician from southern Slovakia. “The Hungarian hero is a special breed, not striving for individual triumph, for victory over others, but seeking ways to change the fate of his nation for the better, even in the most difficult trials,” the Hungarian state news agency (MTI) cites from the letter.

Miklos Duray was undoubtedly a man who was not afraid to speak up for the Hungarian people in southern Slovakia, even when he faced imprisonment and persecution for doing so, both of which he had experienced first-hand, the premier added.

„Despite that, he believed above all in that whether it is called Czechoslovakia or Slovakia, one’s homeland is one’s birthplace, and it is his responsibility to live, work and raise children in the spirit of his Hungarian identity,”

the PM wrote. Viktor Orban emphasised that Miklos Duray was among the first to vocalise that the Hungarians living in Slovakia were not a minority but members of the Hungarian nation.

He was a staunch advocate of human rights and the rights of national ethnicities, as this was the path God had set out for him from childhood. We will always be grateful to him, because it was his initiatives which made possible such achievements of cross-border national policy as the Hungarian Standing Conference and the Hungarian identity card [for Hungarians who are Slovakian citizens], which had been unthinkable for a long time, Mr Orban emphasised in his letter.

The premier wrote that he was shocked to learn that Miklos Duray, a true pillar of Hungarian public life in Slovakia, had passed from this life on earth, and expressed his sincere condolences in a letter to the bereaved family on 9 January.