Hungarian Government Against NGOs

A few months ago the Hungarian government started a hostile process against independent civil organisations whose work is mostly related to the field of democracy development, anti-corruption, human rights and gender. The situation escalated with police investigations in several NGOs offices and suspensions of tax numbers which affects those 4 foundations who manage the EEA/Norway NGO Grants. The investigations are lately extended to cover the Swiss NGO Grants, too.

Not only the Hungarian civil sector, but about a thousand foreign organizations have also raised their voices from more than 15 European countries with e-mail and petition initiatives, protests and articles in the name of solidarity and support. Below we present links to some of the best summaries and documents to share the whole story.
The first two represent a shorter and a more detailed timeline that show the main events of the attacks by the government which goes back to 2013.
The next document gives an explained brief about the overall Hungarian situation starting with the new constitution.
We also added the public statement made by Amnesty International including some background information too.
We attached 3 more links, one of them contains the so called black listed Hungarian NGOs undertaking activities that don’t fit the government’s vision and the other includes different news which were published on the website of Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Last but not least it is important to share an initiative of NGOs from across Europe with the aim to get EU leaders attention and support for Hungary.

We would appreciate any help or forwarding these links to your partner organisations, decision-makers, EU officials and other NGOs and institutions to give a stronger voice and support for the civil society with regard to these issues.

Link-list:
1. http://helsinki.hu/wp-content/uploads/Timeline_of_gov_attacks_against_Hungarian_NGOs_20140921_SHORT.pdf 
2. http://helsinki.hu/wp-content/uploads/Timeline_of_gov_attacks_against_Hungarian_NGOs_20140921.pdf
3. http://helsinki.hu/wp-content/uploads/Hungary_fact_sheets_20140921.pdf
4. http://www.amnesty.eu/content/assets/Doc2014/eur270042014en.pdf
5. http://blacklistedhungarians.eu/
6. http://www.regjeringen.no/en/dep/ud/search.html?quicksearch=hungary&id=87067
7. http://www.esurveyspro.com/Survey.aspx?id=ed23ae97-2927-4f60-874f-1313f9a30958

For further information please contact Gyöngyi Laufer from the Hungarian development CSO platform HAND.

Information provided by HAND.