In early April 2020, three civil societies released an Open Letter to the European Commission in response to Hungary’s so called Authorisation Laws adopted under the disguise of the government’s handling of the COVID pandemic. The letter is intended to express the frustration of 51% of Hungarian voters who in 2018 did not authorize Viktor Orban to continue to hold […]
“This situation is like when someone is accused of murder, he is convicted, yet the murder victim is alive and is pointing his finger at the accused all along,” said a belligerent Prime Minister Viktor Orbán during the European Parliament’s special session on Hungary. Mr. Orbán was referring to what the Hungarian leader claims are false accusations leveled against his […]
Hungary’s governing party got a rare slap on the wrist on Friday, after the National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (NAIH) indicated in a statement that the country’s intelligence agencies were not to be used by political players for partisan purposes. The statement comes after Szilárd Németh, a prominent Fidesz MP and vice chair of Parliament’s National […]
A few of my friends and colleagues – some of whom are non-Hungarian, but have lived in Hungary – have complained that the coverage of the refugee crisis paints this relatively small Central European country and Hungarian society as a whole in a decidedly negative light. As every major international news network descends upon Hungary, from the Keleti railway station […]
It’s impossible to detach public history and collective memory from contemporary politics. How a society portrays the past is determined by current realities, contemporary values or interests, as well as the dominant, “preferred” narratives of history. But the government and public institutions don’t have a monopoly over the past ; where civic engagement is strong, grassroots organizations and local activists […]
There seems to be broad agreement among supporters and officials of the Orbán regime on how to communicate Monday’s politically-motivated police raids against a handful of NGOs, including Ökotárs. These non-profits are perceived to have a liberal or left-leaning bias and are thus targets of Hungary’s right-wing authoritarian government . On Monday evening, Gergely Huth, the assistant publisher of the pro-Fidesz Pesti Srácok blog, […]
The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU) condemned Monday’s police raids against Hungarian NGOs as politically motivated actions that elevate the illiberal Orban government’s attack against civil society to a new, unprecedented level. On September 8, 2014, dozens of police officers from the National Bureau of Investigation (NNI) raided the offices of Ökotárs and Demnet, two NGOs responsible for the distribution of Norwegian NGO […]
A dozen police officers were sent out to search the offices of Budapest’s Ökotárs Alapítvány Monday morning and then at noon, investigators arrived at the offices of another NGO called the Foundation for the Development of Democratic Rights. The police arrived unannounced to both locations and prohibited employees to make any phone calls using office telephones, as they ransacked both headquarters. […]
