Imre Mécs passed away

Imre Mécs, sentenced to death in 1956, former founding member of the Free Democrats Association, former Member of Parliament, has died, the family confirmed to MTI. The news of the politician's death was published by his family on Facebook on Thursday.

They wrote: Imre Mécs died in his 90th year, at home, surrounded by his loving family, on Thursday morning.
The post ended with a quote from Imre Mécs: "You can't live without freedom." Imre Mécs was born in 1933 in Budapest. He graduated from the Eötvös József High School in Budapest, then in 1952 he was admitted to the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Budapest University of Technology, where he graduated in 1957.

Due to his role in the 1956 revolution, he was arrested in June 1957 and sentenced to death in 1958 on charges of organizing against the state. He spent nine months in the house of mourning. In 1959, the death penalty was changed to life imprisonment, in 1963 he was released with an amnesty.

In 1980, he protested against the anti-democratic elections, and in 1983, at the funeral of one of his comrades, he called the events of 1956 a revolution and expressed his hope that history would deliver justice. He was subsequently prosecuted for incitement and removed from his job. Between 1984-89, he was a member of the Danube Circle, and in 1985 he initiated a referendum against the Bős-Nagymarosi Weir. In 1987, he was one of the initiators, drafters and signatories of the letter of the Hundreds, in which the opposition's criticism of the government program was listed in five points.

In 1988, Imre Mécs was a founding member of the Free Initiatives Network, then of the Free Democrats Association, which was formed from it, and also of the Historical Justice Committee, which was established in the same year. In 1990, he won a parliamentary mandate in the colors of the SZDSZ, and was a representative until 2006. In December 2005, he announced that he would suspend his SZDSZ membership for five years, because he would run on the national list of the MSZP in the 2006 elections. He worked as a parliamentarian for another four years, and then as an organizer of civil movements.

In January 2011, he reinstated his membership at the SZDSZ delegate meeting.

MTI