I wish I had been wrong: the performance of Hungary’s illiberal regime during the epidemic’s second wave

András Kádár is co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee and a partner of CENDEP in its human rights research in recent years. Last year he contributed an article to the special feature of the Journal of Human Rights Practice on COVID-19 and human rights. Unfortunately, the long production schedules of academic publishing don't fit well with fast-moving events, so we invited András to bring his analysis of the pandemic response in Hungary up to date.

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In my opinion piece “In its Nature — How Stealth Authoritarianism Keeps Stealing Along During the Pandemic, and How Can it be Stopped?” written for the Journal of Human Rights Practice, I argued that illiberal regimes during large-scale crises including the COVID epidemic were like the fable’s scorpion that stings the frog carrying it through the river although that means death for both of them. Their illiberal nature determines their often self-destructive ways of dealing with crises. At times that call for unity, they opt for polarization. Instead of transparency, they monopolise information and restrict the freedom of expression. They use the crisis to further weaken checks and balances instead of reinforcing public trust by strengthening the executive’s oversight. 

These traits can have tragic consequences. Effectively combating such a health care crisis requires cooperation and trust from society. Any democratic government can only expect this if it explains and is ready to discuss its strategy openly. The Hungarian example shows that this kind of openness is simply not in the nature of illiberal regimes, and the most recent developments highlight this deficiency’s potentially fatal consequences. 

Hungary: refugees and civil society under threat

Richard Carver writes:

“Congratulations to Fidesz and Viktor Orbán on winning the elections in Hungary. We look forward to working with our Hungarian friends to further develop our close partnership.” These are the words of Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson in response to last Sunday’s election, presumably reflecting the official British view (although in these strange times it is not always easy to tell).

This, by contrast, was the verdict of the monitoring mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe:

The 8 April parliamentary elections were characterized by a pervasive overlap between state and ruling party resources, undermining contestants’ ability to compete on an equal basis. Voters had a wide range of political options but intimidating and xenophobic rhetoric, media bias and opaque campaign financing constricted the space for genuine political debate, hindering voters’ ability to make a fully-informed choice.

European elections are not usual territory for CENDEP’s work, but as I explained in an earlier blog post, the result in Hungary has extraordinary and threatening implications for minorities in Hungary, as well as the civil society organizations that defend them. It is no exaggeration to say that the very existence of groups such as the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, our partner in Budapest, is under threat. Any group working on migration issues will have to submit to vetting by the interior ministry and security agencies, while those receiving foreign funding to assist refugees and other migrants will be subject to a 25% tax. These proposed measures are a response to a completely fictitious plot by the financier and philanthropist George Soros to flood Hungary and Europe with Muslim immigrants. The proposed attacks on civil society are contained in a legislative package known as “Stop Soros,” which has been promoted in a thinly-veiled anti-Semitic campaign. The victory of the ruling Fidesz party is seen as a popular vindication of “Stop Soros.”

According to Prime Minister Orbán:

The reason we submitted this package before the elections is in order to allow the Hungarian voters to cast their vote knowing our intention on this. This has happened and we believe we are mandated by this election to pass this law.

Please look at the earlier post for suggestions on possible steps to protect civil society and migrants in Hungary and read what our friends at the Helsinki Committee have to say. You can also donate to support the work of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee. 

UPDATE: This article by Catherine Woollard of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE)  offers an excellent summary of the post-election situation and the steps that should be taken.

The open society and its enemies

Richard Carver writes:

For an 87-year-old, George Soros has an extraordinary work ethic. Not content with trying to stop Brexit, he is currently engaged in secret manipulation of the survivors of the recent Florida school shooting and, with fellow billionaires Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, is working to bring about socialism in the United States. It may just be a coincidence that Soros is a particular bugbear of Vladimir Putin, friend of Donald Trump, the National Rifle Association and UKIP, but it is presumably not at all a coincidence that he, like Bloomberg and Steyer, is Jewish.

But all of this is by way of a preface to what is truly the nuttiest of all the anti-Soros claims, and one that is having a direct impact on some very good friends of CENDEP’s. George Soros was born in Budapest. He survived the war and Nazi occupation of Hungary by acquiring Christian identity papers and then emigrated, first to Britain and then to the United States. Much later, as a philanthropist, his own country of birth, still under Communist rule, was a focus of his giving. One Hungarian beneficiary of Soros’s support was a young democracy activist called Viktor Orbán, who received a scholarship to study at Oxford University.

Orbán is now, of course, prime minister of Hungary and, for several years, has been fighting a high-profile battle to effectively destroy Soros’s greatest contribution to post-Communist Hungary, the Central European University. If you imagined that any national leader would be proud to host one of the world’s premier academic institutions – well, you have much to learn about Viktor Orbán. The Hungarian leader aspires to an “illiberal democracy” on the Russian model. Membership of the European Union is some constraint on his actions; Russia has banned the Open Society foundations but Orbán has to move more stealthily (if not exactly subtly, as the illustrations below reveal).

"Soros would resettle millions from Africa and the Middle East"

All of which brings us to the latest attacks on Soros – and, more importantly, on Hungarian civil society and refugees. In January, the government published a package of laws under the heading “Stop Soros.” The claim behind this is that Soros was behind the flood of “illegal immigrants” into the country, with the intention of destroying Christian European civilization. (I am honestly not making this up.) Of course, there is no flood of immigrants. The large numbers of refugees who passed through Hungary in 2015 did just that – pass through – and the fact that they came to Hungary had rather more to do with the geography of central Europe than Soros’s ability to organize conflict in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Don't let Soros have the last laugh" - implicit anti-Semitism supplemented

by explicit graffiti.

Orbán and his advisers, one assumes, know that all this is utter nonsense, just as the Tsarist secret police knew that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were a forgery (in both instances because they were themselves the forgers). But there are plenty of people who take this perfectly seriously. Anti-Soros posters have been a staple in Hungary for a while and they are usually “improved” by the addition of anti-Semitic graffiti. The recent upping of tempo is presumably connected with the fact that Hungary has a general election in April. The actual target of all this is not Soros himself, but Hungarian civil society. The Stop Soros laws propose a 25% tax on grants to Hungarian organizations from foreign donors, as well as court orders against those who “organize illegal migration.” What is meant by organizing illegal migration is, for example, providing advice, support or legal representation to refugees seeking asylum. According to an official from the prime minister’s office, the goal of the legislation is to “have a debate about those (who support migration), and if they do not confess, the authorities should force this confession.” This presumably refers to a requirement that organizations supporting migration must register with the government or face prosecution.

And this is where we come to our friends. The Hungarian Helsinki Committee (HHC) will be one of the worst affected of civil society organizations, as a consistent and highly effective advocate for refugees (and a recipient of Soros funds). The Helsinki committees date back to the 1970s and represent one of the best examples of citizen action in support of human rights. Lisa Handley and I have worked as partners of the HHC since 2013. First, members of the HHC conducted country research for our study of torture prevention and hosted our visit to Hungary in 2014. Then last year, Lisa provided support for the HHC on a research project on prosecution of torturers, and they hosted us again on a visit to study the use of immigration detention.

The response from the European Union so far has been weak. While there is, rightly, a very high bar for EU entry when it comes to human rights and the freedom of civil society, it appears that it never occurred to anyone that there might be retrogression once a state was in the EU. Illiberal Poland currently appears to Brussels as a bigger problem and, apparently, the EU can only deal with one problem at a time (although the European Commission has referred Hungary to the European Court of Justice). However, the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (in concert with their Polish counterparts) has put forward a very practical interim solution: the creation of an EU fund to support civil society organizations. Such funding is normal for “third countries” (that is, non-EU members), yet does not exist on a long-term basis for civil society within the EU. This would be an essential lifeline to excellent organizations – and through them to the refugees who desperately need representation and support.

The last word goes to Michel Forst, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders: “There is a need for European countries to be more coherent… not to teach human rights outside of Europe and then not respecting human rights inside Europe.” Quite.

Full disclosure: I have knowingly been in the pay of George Soros on at least three occasions – working for Human Rights Watch, ARTICLE 19, and the Open Society Justice Initiative. I am clearly working for the Elders of Zion and my views can be accordingly discounted.