Deputies of the radical nationalist Jobbik party are calling for people who deny the existence of certain crimes to be imprisoned, national daily Nepszabadsag said on Wednesday.
The paper said that the initiative of the three Jobbik deputies is clearly targeted at Gypsies.
The Jobbik initiative makes use of a term - "Gypsy crime" - which has caused outrage in some sections of the mainstream.
"Public discourse has for several decades prevented the solution of some pressing social problems, the exposition of well-known but officially non-recognised forms of crime, for instance Gypsy crime, and research into its roots," the document says.
It goes on to call for prison terms for anyone who denies that such crimes exists.
"Anyone who publicly denies, doubts or presents as insignificant any generally known fact concerning a criminally relevant social relationship, especially the state of public safety, forms of crime and scope of criminals, shall be punishable by up to three years in prison."
The Jobbik deputies demand five-year prison terms for public officials who do the same.
The three MPs accuse a "narrow but all the more violent" minority of imposing its "off-reality position" on the "silent majority".
Addressing Parliament on Monday, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said "we reject the politics and ways of thinking that denies reality". But he also made it clear that he protested against the idea of someone being identified as a potential criminal on the basis of their ethnic origin.
A poll conducted by Nezopont Institute two years ago and widely criticised showed that over 90 percent of respondents, irrespective of their political affiliation, considered "Gypsy crime" an existing phenomenon, and 77 percent said that the Roma had a greater tendency towards crime than the mainstream.
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