Pro-migrant groups in Hungary seen as target after landslide election
BUDAPEST, Hungary — A day after it won an overwhelming election victory on an anti-migration platform, the right-wing populist party of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said it would limit the ability of civic groups to help migrants and refugees.
Election officials Monday were still counting mailed ballots, which added another seat to the Fidesz party’s supermajority and gave it control over 134 of 199 seats in parliament.
That would allow Fidesz and its small ally, the Christian Democrats, to push through the so-called “Stop Soros” bills, said Janos Halasz, the party’s parliamentary spokesman.
Orban alleges that the opposition — collaborating with the United Nations, the European Union and wealthy philanthropist George Soros — wants to turn Hungary into an “immigrant country,” flooding it with mostly Muslim migrants and threatening its security and Christian identity.
Approval of the draft law targeting the advocates for refugees could come as soon as May, the party said.
The new laws could make it hard for groups working with asylum-seekers to continue their activities in Hungary. The laws would force migrants to get government permits; income received from abroad would be taxed; advocacy groups could be banned from going closer than eight kilometres from Hungary’s borders, where asylum-seekers file claims; and foreigners without authorization to help refugees could be banned from Hungary.
The Hungarian Helsinki Committee, which provides legal help to asylumseekers, said it would not let the election results derail its mission.
The committee receives support from Soros’s Open Society Foundations and is frequently identified by the government as one of the “foreign agents” supposedly working against Hungary’s national interests.
“Our association will continue its activities for as long as people in dire straits ask us for help,” the group said. “We are the same age as Hungarian democracy, established in 1989, of which there is less and less left.”
The Helsinki Committee said it was clear that Fidesz “considers its power interests more important than the values of the state of law and democracy, human rights and the Constitution.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel congratulated Orban, pledging that her country will be a “reliable partner” for Budapest, despite differences.
Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert wouldn’t comment on the tone of Orban’s campaign. He acknowledged differences on issues such as migration, but said Merkel and her government are offering “to advance co-operation further, bilaterally as well as in the framework of our common EU membership and the values that unite us in Europe.”
Before the election, Orban’s government had warned that Hungary would descend into chaos should it become an “immigrant country” such as France or Belgium, with funds meant for Hungarian families or the country’s underprivileged Roma minority diverted to migrants. The government said the presence of the migrants would weaken Hungary’s security and increase its risk of terrorism.
He also warned that migrants would halt Hungary’s economic development, would weaken government support for rural areas, would threaten the safety of women and girls, and would turn the capital of Budapest into an “unrecognizable” city. “If the dam bursts, if the borders are opened, if immigrants set foot in Hungary, there will be no going back,” Orban said Friday.
Experts said the landslide victory could lead to government campaigns against other civic groups, independent media and parts of the judiciary that upset Orban with some of its rulings.