The nephew of Viktor Baloha, a Transcarpathian MP with anti-Hungarian sentiments, may face up to three to five years in prison after he hit a doctor so badly during a traffic dispute that the doctor died of his injuries after six days in a coma, the Transcarpathian Hungarian-language news portal Karpathir reported. According to information obtained from witness statements and footage taken by surveillance cameras, the perpetrator – who is also the son of former Ukrainian MP Pavlo Baloha – got into an argument with Ivan Turok, a doctor from Mukachevo (Munkacs). The altercation escalated into a scuffle, during which the perpetrator punched the victim, who fell to the ground and lost consciousness, the portal wrote.
Following the incident, Viktor Baloha's nephew left the scene.
The perpetrator's wife, Daria Begy, and her brother, Mikola Begy, were also in the car. The latter initially claimed responsibility for the violence, but the police managed to find out who the real perpetrator was, Karpathir reported. The authorities arrested the perpetrator and placed him in temporary custody.
Notorious for anti-Hungarian sentiments
The name of the Baloha-clan may sound familiar to our readers, as Magyar Nemzet has reported on their anti-Hungarian actions on several occasions in the recent past. Last October, Andriy Baloha, mayor of Mukachevo, and his father, MP Viktor Baloha, removed the statue of the Turul bird, a national symbol of Hungarians, from the castle of Mukachevo. In its place, a three-pronged trident, the Tryzub, Ukraine's coat of arms, was ceremonially inaugurated.
In a Facebook post shared at the time, Viktor Baloha explained the toppling of the statue of the Turul by saying that it symbolized imperial ambitions and the intrusion of Hungarians into a part of Transcarpathia.
In January this year, with the help of police, they had flags removed from Hungarian establishments in the settlements of Fornos and Dercen, two Hungarian-majority localities in the Mukachevo region.
The move is another revenge campaign by the Baloha-clan, HirTV was told at the time by Gyorgy Dunda, editor-in-chief of the Hungarian-language Karpati Igaz Szo newspaper published in Transcarpathia.
"We strongly condemn the recent actions, marking yet another rampage by the leadership of the city of Mukachevo," Laszlo Brenzovics, president of the Transcarpathian Hungarian Cultural Association (KMKSZ), told our paper, speaking about the anti-Hungarian incidents taking place in the Munkachevo region.
Cover photo: Illustration (Shutterstock)
