On Tuesday, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán will attend the funeral of Miklós Duray in Losonc (Lučenec), Slovakia; the Prime Minister will offer his condolences to family members in person, Bertalan Havasi, the Prime Minister’s press chief informed the Hungarian news agency MTI.

In a message sent earlier, Mr Orbán already offered his condolences to the mourning family in connection with the recent passing of the Hungarian politician in Slovakia Miklós Duray.

In the message also forwarded to MTI, the Prime Minister wrote: the Hungarian hero is a peculiar type; rather than aiming for individual victory or triumphing over others, even amidst the hardest trials he keeps seeking ways in which to change the nation’s fate for the better.

The Prime Minister wrote that Miklós Duray was most certainly a man who was not scared to speak up for the Hungarians in Slovakia even during times when this carried the threat of imprisonment and persecution; he had first-hand experience of both.

“Despite this, he believed above all that though they may call it Czechoslovakia or Slovakia, one’s country is one’s motherland where it is one’s duty to live and to work as a Hungarian, and to raise one’s children in that same spirit,” the Prime Minister wrote.

Mr Orbán stressed that Miklós Duray had been among the first to lay down that Hungarians living in Slovakia were not a minority, but members of the Hungarian nation.

“He persistently fought for human and national minority rights as the Lord designated this path for him from childhood. We will always be grateful to him because it is thanks to his initiative that many achievements of a cross-border nation policy – regarded for so long as inconceivable – were accomplished, including the Hungarian Standing Conference and the Hungarian identity card,” Mr Orbán highlighted in his message.

The Prime Minister wrote: he was shocked to hear that the earthly life of Miklós Duray, a pillar of Hungarian public life in Slovakia had come to an end, and offered his sincere condolences in his message sent to the mourning family on 9 January.