Hungary to target pro-refugee NGOs
NEW LAWS COULD MAKE IT VERY HARD FOR GROUPS WORKING WITH ASYLUM SEEKERS TO CONTINUE THEIR ACTIVITIES
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has won a third consecutive term in office on a virulently anti-migration platform, and it’s likely that advocates for refugees and asylum seekers will be among the first casualties of his drive to prevent Hungary from becoming an “immigrant country”.
“We created the opportunity for ourselves to defend Hungary,” Orban said after his landslide win in Sunday’s vote.
An official from Orban’s governing Fidesz party said yesterday that lawmakers from the right-wing populist group are expected to approve a draft law targeting refugee advocates as soon as May.
Parliamentary spokesman Janos Halasz said the party would be able to push through the so-called “Stop Soros” bills thanks to its new supermajority in the legislature.
Orban claims that the opposition — collaborating with the UN, the European Union and wealthy philanthropist George Soros — wants to flood Hungary with mostly Muslim migrants, threatening its security and Christian identity.
The new laws could make it very hard for groups working with asylum seekers to continue their activities in Hungary. It would force them to get government permits, their income received from abroad would be taxed and they could be banned from going nearer than eight kilometres from Hungary’s borders, where asylum seekers file claims.
According to the Orban government, Hungary will descend into chaos should it become an “immigrant country” like France or Belgium, with funds meant for Hungarian families or the country’s underprivileged Roma minority diverted to migrants, whose presence will weaken Hungary’s security and increase its terror risk.
If migrants settle in Hungary, Orban claims Hungary’s economic development will end, its support for rural areas will dwindle, women and girls will be “hunted down” and Budapest, the capital, will become “unrecognisable”.
“If the dam bursts, if the borders are opened, if immigrants set foot in Hungary, there will be no going back,” Orban said during his campaign-closing rally on Friday. “The greatest threat of all is posed by the millions of immigrants coming from the south, and Europe’s leaders ... have no intention of defending the borders.”
Orban’s clampdown on non-governmental organisations is also based on his belief that only elected politicians have the right to be involved in politics. The government spokesman made that very clear during the wait for Sunday’s election results.
“The loopholes still present in the legal system which allow unauthorised organisations to rummage around, so to speak, in the doings of political life, in political decision-making, need to be closed,” Zoltan Kovacs told news website Index.hu.
The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union also expects to become
I don’t expect that this will be an easy two years to come and I believe that the government will do everything in their power to minimise our impact.”
Stefania Kapronczay | Hungarian Civil Liberties Union executive director
a target of government “legislative and communications attacks”.
“I don’t expect that this will be an easy two years to come and I believe that the government will do everything in their power to minimise our impact,” said HCLU executive director Stefania Kapronczay.
“However, human rights is an ideal and it cannot be shut down.”