Support Gergely Nyilas – Hungary’s Günter Wallraff

The Orbán government has decided to press charges against Gergely Nyilas, a journalist who works for the popular Index news site. Nyilas wrote a series of reports on the treatment of refugees, posing as “Georgij Kulakov,” a migrant from Kyrgyzstan, to write his pieces. According to the government, Mr. Nyilas broke the law by registering as a refugee.

Gergely Nyilas, Hungarian journalist in refugee garb.

Gergely Nyilas, Hungarian journalist in refugee garb.

Many of us feel strongly about press freedom and I think that Mr. Nyilas has the right to publish undercover just like German journalist, Günter Wallraff did. He is 73 years old and a legend today. In 1974, he was arrested and tortured as a Greek demonstrator by the military dictatorship in Athens. He was undercover when arrested. He purposely did not carry his German passport that could identify him as a foreigner. After his identity was revealed, Mr. Wallraff was convicted and spent time in a Greek jail.

In 1977, Mr. Wallraff worked as an undercover editor for the tabloid Bild-Zeitung in Hanover, calling himself Hans Esser. Later he wrote about the manipulative journalistic methods of Alex Springer Verlag.

Without Wallraff’s undercover methods the crimes of the Greek dictatorship against their own people and Springer Verlag’s crocked journalism would not have been known to the public. In 1990 an English-language film The Man Inside was made from his story, starring Jürgen Prochnow and the Peter Coyote.

A couple of weeks ago, the New York based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released a report stating that the European Union seldom punishes member countries for offending press freedom. Since the Orbán government took power in 2010, it has been accused of meddling in Hungary’s newsrooms, imposing taxes and regulations unfairly and harassing media outlets critical of the government.

According to Kati Marton, an author and a Hungarian-American board member of CPJ, Orbán’s Hungary is the most egregious practitioner of controlled press. “They are making it virtually impossible for journalists to do their job.” CPJ even suggested sanctioning the Hungarian government via Article 7, a clause in the EU treaty that could suspend a member state’s voting rights at the European Commission if it is found in “serious and persistent breach” of treaty principles. The violation of press freedom is the canary in the coal mine and it is about more than just the press. “When a country starts rolling back press freedoms, it never stops there” claims Marton.

She is right. The Orbán government has started a war against opposition news outlets. They have made fact-finding journalism almost impossible, and started prosecuting critical journalists just like the Greek military dictatorship did decades ago. No surprise, since the Orbán system looks more and more like a dictatorship.

György Lázár

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