“A state agency has been set up for witch-hunts” – the destruction of Hungarian civil society began ten years ago

Ten years ago, on September 8, 2014, Veronika Móra, the director of the Ökotárs Foundation, was escorted out of her office by police officers. Ökotárs, Autonómia, Kárpátok and DemNet came under fire from the government because the Norwegian Fund’s funding for Hungarian NGOs was distributed independently of the government, according to professional criteria. To mark the round anniversary, the NGOs organised a commemorative event, where I, as a former and current client and head of a funded organisation, also spoke. The speech is published here.

“Hungary continues campaign against NGOs with massive police raid” – this was the headline of the English story we published ten years ago, which reported that the police had raided the premises of organisations managing the Norwegian NGO Fund. They were looking for data of organisations on a list compiled by the Prime Minister’s Office, including the Asimov Foundation, which was working with Atlatszo on a funded project at the time.

At that time we had already passed an investigation by the Government Control Office, in which Átlátszó and the Asimov Foundation decided not to cooperate with the state office that was being used illegally for party purposes. At the same time, because we had nothing to hide, we made the information about the grant under investigation available on the Asimov Foundation website.

Ten years have passed since then, and Atlatszo is back in the same shoes, only now the state institution used illegally for party purposes is called the Sovereignty Protection Office. We do not cooperate with them either.

When Vera was put in a police car ten years ago, an era came to an end. An era that had lasted since the change of regime, in which we might have thought that we would catch up with the Western world, albeit in a bumpy way, but that we would get there sooner or later, both intellectually and financially.

In a broader sense, we have all worked and are still working on this catching-up, those who are fighting to protect the environment, human rights, freedom of the press, the rule of law and democracy. These are the core values of the European Union, which Hungary joined twenty years ago.

Ten years ago, however, our country turned back towards the authoritarian one-party system and Russia, and withdrew its support from civil society organisations with Western values. But it has gone even further, and it does not want to allow the West to support them either. That is why Vera had to be put in a police car. So that everyone would understand.

Over the past ten years we have been bullied in a variety of ways. We have been the target of smear campaigns by the government press, both organisationally and personally. Before 2010, Fidesz endorsed and encouraged investigative journalism, but once in power, they stopped asking for watchdogs, checks and balances.

Átlátszó was branded as a servant of foreign interests, a national security risk, even a spy organisation, and I myself became a ‘traitorous mercenary’, among other things, in the governing-party press.

Yet what Átlátszó does is called public service journalism, and in our more fortunate countries it is also supported by the state, because it serves the interests of the whole community when it exposes waste of public money, environmental destruction and abuses of power.

Fidesz knew this perfectly well when it was in opposition – I myself first went to the European Parliament with Gergely Gulyás and his party colleagues a decade and a half ago to complain about the state of the rule of law in Hungary. However, instead of support or praise, since the “voting booth revolution”, we have received nothing but a steady stream of smear campaigns from them, in which not only the party press but also the pseudo-civil organisations founded by the governing party and financed by Hungarian taxpayers’ money have joined in.

And the latest development is that a special state agency has been set up for witch-hunts.

We did not back down ten years ago, and we will not back down now. We hope that our supporters will not either, because that is the purpose of the long campaign against us. To shut off the money taps to the independent press and critical NGOs, not only at home, but also to drive their international partners out of the country. To crush, to make impossible, to starve out anyone who does not move in tandem with the “system of national cooperation”.

But Hungary is our country too, so there is nothing left to do but to move forward. Let’s not let ourselves down.

As Ökotárs is still here and distributing international aid, let us all get on with our work. Let’s laugh at the abusers. Let’s filter the government attacks down to the fact that surely our work is valuable and relevant if they want to thwart us. Let’s draw a sense of importance from it. Let’s write our next grant application too. Let’s submit it to Ökotárs.

Written and translated by Tamás Bodoky. Cover image: On 8 September 2014, Veronika Móra, director of the Ökotárs Foundation, was escorted out of her office by police officers.