Hungarian NGOs blast 'criminalisation' under new laws

BUDAPEST: Leading Hungarian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) denounced Monday legislation proposed by Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government that would criminalise the act of helping asylum-seekers and could see activists and lawyers jailed.
Announced last week, the so-called "Stop Soros" package of bills will be debated by the Hungarian parliament from Tuesday with a vote expected later this month.
The measures would allow courts to pass criminal sentences including jail terms of up to one year on individuals for aiding asylum-seekers.
Representatives from prominent local NGOs called the proposals "an attack against human rights defenders".
Parliament should "drop the idea of criminalising our work which is in solidarity with asylum-seekers and refugees", Julia Ivan, head of Amnesty International in Hungary, told a press conference outside parliament.
"We do what we have to do, we are not criminals," she said.
The government says the laws are aimed at persons helping undeserving migrants to acquire refugee status, for example if those persons were not in immediate danger before entering Hungary, or who entered the country illegally.
Named after the liberal US billionaire George Soros, the measures are the government's latest broadside against the 87-year-old, who has long been accused by the fiercely anti-immigration Orban of facilitating migration into Europe.
The run-up to a parliamentary election in April, which Orban's ruling Fidesz party won by a landslide, was dominated by anti-migrant and anti-Soros messaging on pro-government media.
After the vote, Orban vowed to clampdown on NGOs, whose staff he called "Soros mercenaries".
According to Marta Pardavi, co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a group providing free legal aid to asylum-seekers, Stop Soros is meant "to stigmatise, intimidate, and sanction human rights defenders' work".
The measures are "unacceptable, ... and should have no place in a democratic country that is run by the rule-of-law", Pardavi told the press conference.
Last week the UNHCR refugee agency also called on the government to withdraw the plans.
They "would significantly restrict the ability of NGOs and individuals to support asylum-seekers and refugees", it said in a statement.
The EU's rights watchdog, the Venice Commission, has also begun a probe into the laws' compliance with EU values, and is due to give its opinion later in June.
The NGOs pledged Tuesday to use all legal means to challenge the legislation, depending on the final version approved by parliament, including bringing cases before the Hungarian constitutional court and the EU courts. — AFP