No other NATO member has suffered this much against their own soldiers.

No other NATO member has suffered such a fate with their own soldiers" – this is what Kádár András Kristóf, the Vice-President of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, summarizes about the ordeal that the soldiers who refused vaccination had to endure during the Covid pandemic. Kádár, who provided legal assistance to the unvaccinated soldiers, believes: "The way the government handled this situation was completely untenable and unjustifiable." Although the affected parties never managed to win any court, and the Strasbourg European Court of Human Rights did not take the case into its agenda, the soldiers do not give up. The HVG spoke to the expert who examined the matters and processes multiple times, and found numerous contradictory details, including a special case. According to our sources, approximately 1200 soldiers were affected by two rules in total between 2021–2022. One: from November 2020 until after the government change – first in reference to the pandemic, then in reference to the war situation in Ukraine – the soldiers could not make a unilateral decision. The other rule is that, due to the Covid pandemic, the vaccination against coronavirus was made mandatory for all state and local government employees from the end of 2021, which also made it mandatory for the soldiers. The joint application of the two regulations created an impossible situation. Based on the first rule, the soldiers who refused vaccination were given one year of unpaid leave from January 2022, and then a large part of them were not allowed to be discharged due to the other rule. In addition, – and the HVG documented this with several documents – not many were allowed to waive their obligation, which effectively amounted to "coercive" pressure. Official data is not available, but the HVG also received estimates from several sources that half of the 1200 unvaccinated soldiers were allowed to be discharged by mutual agreement. Of the 600 who were sentenced to one year of inactivity, slightly more than 300 were taken back into the army in the meantime. However, they were not allowed to be reinstated from March 2022, even though, from that time, in all sectors of public life, including the police, correctional services, and even healthcare, the situation had eased, but the unvaccinated could still return to the army. After all this, in December 2022, one day before the end of the epidemic emergency, the legal status of the unvaccinated soldiers on unpaid leave was terminated. What happened gives the impression that the matter was treated as less and less a health issue. Kádár András Kristóf emphasizes that the problem was not that vaccinations were made mandatory and restrictions were applied, but how this was handled; for example, it is unacceptable that they were not allowed to be discharged or waive their obligation during one year of unpaid leave. The HVG spoke to Pálóczi Zoltán, former army NCOs, who represent slightly more than two hundred affected individuals and act as their quasi-advocates. This man, now 43, was a scout in Debrecen, then served as a hospital director, and he received the first vaccine shipment arriving in Hungary. Subsequently, he participated in an illegal mission from which he returned three months later, on an ad hoc basis, one day before they would have begun to remove the unvaccinated from their posts. Pálóczi Zoltán was a sergeant. HVG / Cabrera Martin The composition of the group he represented is varied in terms of age and rank, as well as the motivation for refusing vaccination. He stated that there were some who simply did not want to be vaccinated, besides some who did not ask for the vaccine for health reasons. There were also those whose antibody levels were so high that doctors would not have administered serum. He told that more than some of the soldiers who had undergone quasi-foreign operations had many vaccination books filled with details about the missions – this also suggests that vaccination was not the problem for them. Pálóczi's main point, however, was that the military and political leadership wanted to mutilate reality. They were not willing to issue a regular order for vaccination because they did not want to take responsibility. They used the legal incapacity of the Hungarian soldiers and socialized in the way: this does not matter. There are signs that even after the Covid pandemic, tension was felt in the Orbán government, perhaps in the excessive severity of the procedures. The former Chief of Staff, Böröndi Gábor, allowed in 2024 the return of soldiers who were ejected due to their unvaccinated status, but with harsh restrictions: they were not guaranteed the same posts or even the same rank, so they lived with this possibility less. "We are waiting for those who lost their service status due to the refusal of the Covid-19 vaccine and want to join the defense" – this was announced by the new Minister of Defence, Ruszin-Szendi Romulusz, after the government change, in the autumn of this year. This is also interesting because he was the Chief of Staff when the unvaccinated were highlighted. The contradiction that the exclusion and reinstatement of the unvaccinated are also connected to him, he tried to resolve: today he would not have decided differently if doctors and military doctors said that vaccination could prevent the pandemic. However – it is readable in the Ministry of Defence's bulletin, on the honvedelem.hu website, in the statement there no longer agreed that the former political leadership did not allow these soldiers to waive their obligation. Therefore, they decided now to wait for them. As the Minister of Defence, Ruszin-Szendi Romulusz can support the Tisa Party's promise: the ejected soldiers can return under NER by referring to rejuvenation. Healing requires time, and the bandages placed on the wounds do not make one forget that the system needs to be renewed. This is the last option for rehabilitation. The affected soldiers want more than just a position, perhaps not even as soldiers, to be returned. According to Pálóczi Zoltán, they want full rehabilitation: financial compensation for the year of unemployment and the two monthly military salaries paid in 2022, which they also did not receive, as well as the possibility of rightful reinstatement. The representative of Mi Hazánk, Novák Előd, who highlighted the issue of the unvaccinated soldiers, submitted a motion for their rehabilitation, which was discussed by the parliamentary Committee on Defence and National Defence at the end of September, but it stalled in the assembly. The committee members assured their sympathy for the case by three of the deputies who presented the matter in the session, but the majority did not make a significant decision, and the Fidesz representatives spoke absurdly about the necessity of restitution, as if the matter had not erupted under their government. The ruling party representatives are also in a difficult situation because they have to give an opinion on the responsibility of Ruszin-Szendi, who is now the Minister of Defence. "In order to find a solution, we try not to corner them by reminding them of this" says Novák on this question, asking how much this delays the process. The chairman of the assembly, Bakos Csaba, finally stated that they would wait for the ministry's position. It soon became clear what the government's stance is. On October 5, the Minister of Human Strategy Baráth Ernő accepted the unvaccinated soldiers' representatives in the Ministry of Defence. Pálóczi stated their demands, which, according to his former sergeant report, Baráth listened to, and then announced: if there are offenses, they should turn to the courts.