A Hungarian radio
station on Wednesday fired two staff members after a
gay government official was depicted on its Web site
standing outside Nazi
Germany's Auschwitz concentration camp while
wearing a pink triangle symbol, used by the Nazis to
label homosexual men.
The photo montage
showing State Secretary Gabor Szetey with a pink
triangle on his suit in front of Auschwitz's main gate
appeared Wednesday morning on the Web site of Lanchid
Radio. It was later removed.
Szetey recently
announced he was gay, the first government member to come
out in Hungary.
''I have one
message for those who did this and those who agree with
it--I cannot be intimidated,'' Szetey said
Wednesday after a government cabinet meeting.
Lanchid Radio
said it had fired two of its editors for the
''impermissible and offensive'' picture.
''The owners and
managers of Lanchid Radio condemn what happened and
apologize to State Secretary Gabor Szetey and to everyone
who was offended by the picture in question,'' the
radio station said in a statement.
Socialist prime
minister Ferenc Gyurcsany and other ministers also
condemned the photograph and what they described as a new
threat in Hungary from neo-fascist movements.
''This is a
scoundrel act because somebody doesn't understand that
Auschwitz is one of greatest tragedies of Europe and the
history of humanity,'' the prime minister told
reporters. ''Fascists are gathering. They aren't
knocking on doors but are here among us.''
On Saturday, 56
members of a new nationalist group called the ''Magyar
Garda'' (Hungarian Guard) were sworn in during a ceremony in
Buda Castle, just outside the offices of President
Laszlo Solyom.
The inductees
wore black pants and white shirts, their black caps and
vests emblazoned with a coat of arms with the colors of the
Arpad Stripes.
The striped
red-and-white symbol is a centuries-old Hungarian banner, a
close version of which was used by the Arrow Cross, a
pro-Nazi party that briefly ran Hungary near the end
of World War II.
Gyurcsany called
on Solyom, the center-right opposition parties, and
Hungary's Christian churches to unequivocally condemn the
Magyar Garda.
Hungarian and
international Jewish groups have asked Gyurcsany to ban the
Magyar Garda, saying its uniform is reminiscent of those use
by the fascists in the 1940s. (Pablo Gorondi, AP)