In Hungary, new regulations on the organization of demonstrations came into force yesterday. Thus, the police will be able to forbid them if they consider that they jeopardize safety or public order or affect the rights and the freedom of others. Also, the manifestations can be forbidden if, by the duration or means used, they harm the right of others to private life or the dignity of their ethnic or religious communities.

Some Hungarian NGOs argue that the new rules offer the authorities the possibility to arbitrarily forbid any protest. Also yesterday, the largest independent news portal in Hungary has shortly closed its first online page to draw attention to what it considers to be the decline of its editorial freedom and to get funding from its readers, thus protecting their independence, Reuters reports. Journalists who work at Index.hu fear that the two investors who took control of the news portal last month would be linked to Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his right-wing party Fidesz, and would try to reduce editorial freedom.

“Monday morning I did something unprecedented: I stopped the Index for a while so that those who consider it important to see how it would be without us,” wrote editor-in-chief Attila Toth-Szenesi in an article. He said the acquisition of the portal was “a matter of vital importance,” as the new owners who control the Index, a separate CEMP company that sells its advertising space, and another company that offers editorial systems. Toth-Szenesi fears that the acquisition was somehow funded by Orban’s associates through a mechanism known in Hungary as the National Cooperation System (NCS). Under the auspices of NCS, set up in 2010 to counteract liberal values and support nationalist policies, some of Orban’s associates have obtained much of the business funded by public funds.

“In today’s Hungary, those who are able to lend billions to buyers must belong to Orban’s NCS,” said Toth-Szenesi, announcing a fundraising campaign via the Internet, believing that this funding would help reduce the financial dependency on by CEMP. Until 12.00 GMT on Monday, the campaign raised about 10 million forints ($ 36,000) from approximately 1,350 supporters. None of the two new owners – Gabor Ziegler and Jozsef Oltyan – were available to make any comments regarding this matter. Ziegler previously denied having been supported by someone in the decision to purchase the Index. Oltyan is the member of a coalition party with Fidesz, while Ziegler has been part of the business branch of the Index for nearly two decades.

Dozens of newspapers, radio and television stations critical of Orban – reelected in April – have changed owners over the last four years. Some were then closed, while others quickly and radically changed their tone. The government denies that it undermines the freedom of the press or tries to influence the media or their owners through the advertising market. In Hungary, the trend of advertising agencies has been to make more advertising in the pro-government media, allowing them to thrive, while institutions with a more critical attitude to the Orban government have suffered. Orban severely criticized in the past the Index website, which investigates alleged government corruption and publishing articles that criticize the anti-immigration and anti EU ideology, along with information from independent sources.

Source: Adevarul