Miklós Haraszti (born 2 January 1945,
Jerusalem
Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...
) is a
Hungarian politician, writer, journalist, human rights advocate and university professor. He served the maximum of two terms as the
OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media from 2004 to 2010. Currently he is adjunct professor at the School of International & Public Affairs of Columbia Law School, New York and visiting professor at the
Central European University (CEU), Department of Public Policy.
Biography
Haraszti studied philosophy and literature at
Budapest
Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...
University. During the late 1960s he belonged to an underground
left-wing
Left-wing politics describes the range of Ideology#Political ideologies, political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole or of certain social ...
student organization that opposed the ruling
Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party and was in contact with the Chinese embassy in Budapest. In 1976 he co-founded the Hungarian Democratic Opposition Movement and in 1980 he became editor of the samizdat periodical
Beszélő.
In 1989, Haraszti participated in the "roundtable" negotiations on transition to free elections. A member of the Hungarian Parliament from 1990 to 1994, he then moved on to lecture on democratization and
media politics at numerous universities.
Haraszti's books include ''A Worker in a Worker's State'' and ''The Velvet Prison'', both of which have been translated into several languages.
In 2012, Haraszti was appointed UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of
human rights in Belarus. He served until October 2018 when he was succeeded by
Anaïs Marin.
Personal life
He is married. His wife is Antónia Szenthe. They have two daughters.
[ iography - Source: Ki kicsoda 2004. Hermann Péter szerk., Budapest, 2003./ref>
]
Selected publications
Essays
"The Hungarian Independent Peace Movement"
''Telos
Telos (; ) is a term used by philosopher Aristotle to refer to the final cause of a natural organ or entity, or of human art. ''Telos'' is the root of the modern term teleology, the study of purposiveness or of objects with a view to their aims, ...
'' 61 (Fall 1984). New York
Telos Press
Books
* ''A Worker in a Worker's State; Piece-Rates in Hungary''. Penguin Books, 1977.
* ''The Velvet Prison; Artists Under State Socialism''. Basic Books, 1987.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Haraszti, Miklos
1945 births
Living people
Hungarian Jews
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
United Nations special rapporteurs
Alliance of Free Democrats politicians
Members of the National Assembly of Hungary (1990–1994)
Human rights in Belarus
International Writing Program alumni
Hungarian officials of the United Nations