Tibor Pákh

„In June 1966 I was told that the Human Rights’ Committee of UN was to hold a seminar of two weeks in Hungary. So I caught the occasion and I wrote again my complaint addressed to the Chief Prosecutor on the regular abuses on human rights. I repeated, as I used to, that Kádár had denied us when he stated that there weren’t anyone in prison for political reasons. I demanded the disbanding of the operative forces, I demanded open, ordinary hearing at court that I could prove my truth. I denounced seclusions, abuses and similar atrocities. And I announced in the same time that I was starting hunger-strike. On these occasions prisoners are regularly separated and punished immediately. 48 hours can pass in the course of which the striker is offered drink and meal in every occasion. I kept to refuse them saying that I wanted to continue my protest. I didn’t drink either. After 48 hours hunger-strikers are brought to be feeded. It is called artificial nourishing. A liquid of 960 calories is mixed with milk. The prisoner is brought to the sick-room, this mixture is made, one litre of milk is mixed with sugar and with some butter and egg. It is made right in front of the striker. It is the physician of the prison who offers it saying that „even if you drink it, we take as if you continued the strike”. He tries to talk him out of his strike, then he tells to drink it at least. I told I wouldn’t drink it, it was part of my protest. Then a rubber pipe is pushed in the throat which has a funnel at the end and this liquid is poured in it. It was done twice or three times to me and when I experienced this type of feeding I gave up the hunger-strike in 1964. This is a very painful treatment. Well, I had enough of it. In 1966 however I didn’t finish, I continued it for about five weeks. There were obviously short periods of four-five days when I wasn’t feeded because they thought I would give it up. After five weeks when I was brought again to the sick-room a doctor came from the observation center and he told me that there were harsher methods, too. This person already died, I can tell you his name, he was called Balogh. He said that there were harsher methods and they thought to take me to the observation room. I knew well that there was forced treatment and observation, too, but I didn’t know that it was right there and it was only a short way to bring me there. They feeded me for another week and then I was brought to the observation room. […] First I was brought to the chief medical officers’ room. He asked me: „Do you drink?” I answered that I was determined to protest and they shouldn’t have to intervene in it, especially physicians shouldn’t have to since I did my hunger-strike because of the abuses committed against my elementary human rights. I was put immediately on the operating board, my mouth was gagged, I was tied, I was kept and the electrodes were pushed to my temples from two sides and electricity was switched on. This was the first time when I got electric shock. I fainted immediately of course. It was made me directly. On principle one can get electric shock only if he is given an injection before which switches off one’s consciousness. But I was always given the shock directly. When you come to your senses, you just lie, you feel yourself between being and not being. You don’t understand what is around. At first the nearest images return to memory, later the older ones, too. I don’t know how others lived it, it is how I experienced it. God however saved me, I received electric shock several times but my consciousness always returned.

„In April 1971 my punishment was interrupted due to the international protest about which I didn’t know obviously. I was transferred to an ordinary hospital and I was kept there until November 1971. Then I was freed from there, too. Nevertheless the injustices didn’t come to an end. On the one hand I was placed on probation, on the other hand I was put under surveillance. That is to say I was under two types of control which excluded one the other in principle. The police surveillance was officially ordered which involved that I couldn’t leave the territory of Budapest and I had to present myself twice in a month at the local police station. Contemporary to it I was also under mental observation. These two measures excluded each other, because or this or that could be in force, not both of them in the same time. These two procedures however went on. My duty to report finished in 1976 but it didn’t mean that also the nosing and the spying around me stopped. It happened for example in 1977 or 1978 that a policeman came on Sunday and he wanted to check me. I wrote a complaint on it to the Chief Prosecutor asking the reasons for the pestering. These circumstances might have led to the distortion of my personality. – And how could you avoid it? – I could avoid it by ignoring these attempst. The truth must win at the end. And if somebody fights for it, if somebody was educated in the spirit of justice and he wants to live in justice, too, he may find annoying if the authorities which are responsible for the injustices or their officials which commit the abuses pester him. But if I understand well the grace offered us by our Lord and if I accept that he is the defender of the absolute truth, these inconveniences are simply like flea-bites to dogs. And dogs get easily rid of the fleas by shaking themselves.”