Hungarians are polarised on the refugees making the journey to Europe. Hardliners support the government’s tough approach to curbing immigration, as do a large number of ordinary people. But many others are ashamed by what is happening, explains Tamas Bodoky.
The founder of Atlatszo, Index on Censorship’s award winner for digital activism in 2015, Bodoky blames the situation on the government’s campaign of painting migrants as dangerous enemies. “The mainstream and pro-government press is full of scaremongering, claiming refugees are terrorists, that they carry diseases and are taking work away from Hungarian people,” he says.
In a departure for the data-driven investigative journalism and freedom of information organisation, Atlatszo has been covering the human side of the situation by reporting on the experiences and views of asylum seekers since the government began trying to halt the flow of refugees in July. Bodoky and his team have covered conditions at the border and some travelled to Turkey to look at how refugees are crossing the Mediterranean.
“We have interviewed a lot of people at train stations and other ports,” Bodoky explains.
Early last month, Bodoky put together a short documentary capturing the chaotic events of 4 September 2015, when approximately 2,000 refugees attempted to walk from Budapest to Austria. They had been stuck in the Hungarian capital for days, many of them stranded in train stations without help. Late that night, after walking about 30 km, they were finally put on buses and taken to the Austrian border.
Since Index last spoke to Bodoky in June, the Hungarian government has — for the second time since 2010 — changed the law regarding freedom of information requests, which Atlatszo relies heavily on for its investigative work.
“They are charging fees so people won’t file so many requests,” says Bodoky, adding that while Atlatszo isn’t very happy with the situation, it won’t be deterred. “We will pay the small fee and continue to make requests, but citizens and activists who have started to use freedom of information quite a lot may not want or be able to,” he says.
Atlatszo’s readership has been steadily rising and the publication is now over 50% crowdfunded. Around 3,000 donors contribute monthly and the amount of money raised from the 1% of income tax Hungarian citizens can donate to NGOs they sympathise with has tripled for Atlatszo since last year.
Winning the Index Digital Activism Award has helped Atlatszo gain international attention. “We get a lot of press requests for quotes on important issues in Hungary,” says Bodoky. Staffers at Atlatszo have been acting as a source on the refugee crisis for international media outlets such The Guardian and have appeared on Al Jazeera’s Listening Post, a weekly programme examining the world’s media.
In the coming months, Bodoky says Atlatszo will “continue to work on anti-corruption, with articles on state subsidies and budget spending, which is our core business, and of course on the migrant crisis”.
At least eight journalists were beaten and three detained as they covered a clash between refugees and the Hungarian police at the border with Serbia on 16 September.
Among those attacked were Swedish photographer Meli Petersson Ellafi, Jordan Davis, a journalist at Swiss RTS, and an entire film crew working for Radio Television of Serbia. They were covering events at the Horgoš-Röszke highway border crossing, which the Hungarian authorities had blocked the day before, leaving around 2,000 refugees stranded on the Serbian side.
On 16 September, at around 2:30 PM local time, refugees attempted to break through a gate into Hungary. While most were protesting peacefully, a small number threw stones and bottles across the fence at the Hungarian riot police. The police responded with tear gas, pepper spray and water cannons.
“At some point, the riot police retreated from the fence and the refugees managed to open the gate,” Timea Becková, who works for Slovakian newspaper Denník N, recalls. Confusion followed, with many refugees thinking the Hungarian authorities would let them in, so they walked towards the riot police on the Hungarian side. Several dozen journalists on the Serbian side followed the crowd.
At around 5:30 PM, TEK, the Hungarian anti-terror SWAT unit, equipped with sidearms, helmets and face masks, started pushing the refugees back towards Serbia.
“As I was moving backwards, I stopped for a moment to help an old man who fell and risked being trodden by riot police, which is when an officer hit me with a baton,” Becková said. She repeatedly told police in Hungarian that she is a journalist, but it made no difference.
“Suddenly the TEK guys, not the riot police, started running towards us — it was mayhem,” says Warren Richardson, an Australian photographer. Despite having two cameras, he was grabbed from behind by an officer.
“Clearly he was there to beat, not to ask questions,” Richardson told Index on Censorship, adding that he was standing on ‘no mans’ land’ between Serbia and Hungary. “From there they beat me into Hungary, then took me from the border to the police station illegally. They kidnapped me.”
“Law enforcement lost control of the situation,” Becková said. While she doesn’t hold a grudge against TEK, she says the events that followed were outrageous. She was forcefully brought back to the Hungarian side — with her hands tied tightly with a plastic wrap — where she was thrown to the ground.
She was later handed over to the regular police along with Richardson, who was kicked in the head and chest, and the Polish journalist, Jacek Tacik, who suffered a head wound. They were taken to a police station in Szeged along with a number of detained refugees.
There they were questioned on suspicion of having crossed the border illegally. In addition, Becková was accused of inciting rebellion and Tacik was told he had assaulted a policeman. However, this accusation did not emerge again during his interrogation, he told Index.
During questioning, Richardson refused to cooperate. “I stood up for myself. They were making up laws. They never took my name, personal address or fingerprints,” he said.
After interrogations that lasted up to 13 hours, the journalists were released and the charges were dropped.
In a statement, the Hungarian police denied beating the journalists. “The police — in accordance with the law — used necessary and proportional force against the members of an aggressive group that was using instruments that could cause serious harm to the police protecting the border of Hungary and the European Union. The media workers stayed at their own risk in an area where the police — after a proper warning — used coercive instruments.”
Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said it was a surprise to find journalists among the chaos. He said that in situations like this, the safety of journalists cannot be guaranteed, therefore they should stay away. A policeman is not in the position to judge who is a troublemaker and who represents the media, he added.
The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) has denounced the attack. “It is incomprehensible to see an EU country like Hungary constantly violating press freedom and human rights. The European Commission and international institutions must take action against these serious violations,” EFJ President Mogens Blicher Bjerregaard said.
“It is a prerequisite for EU member states to respect the EU Charter on fundamental rights which sets out standards on media freedom and freedom of expression.”
The incident was also condemned by the Committee to Protect Journalists. “We are appalled by the police violence against journalists covering this world story,” CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova said. “The Hungarian government must make a clear and unequivocal statement that it will not tolerate such behavior.”
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The Hungarian parliament has voted yes to plans to allow the government and other public authorities to charge a fee for the “human labour costs” of freedom of information (FOI) requests this week, as well as granting sweeping new powers to withhold information. It just needs the signature of President Janos Ader before it becomes law.
The bill, submitted by Minister of Justice László Trócsányi, was published on the government website just days before the vote, on 3 July, precluding any meaningful debate about the proposal. It is widely believed that through this initiative, governing party Fidesz is trying to put a lid on a number of scandals involving wasteful government spending, uncovered through FOI requests.
According to Transparency International, the bill “appears to be a misguided response by the Hungarian government to civil society’s earlier successful use of freedom of information tools to publicly expose government malpractice and questionable public spending”.
One provision of the bill allows public bodies to refuse to make certain data public for 10 years if deemed to have been used in decision-making processes, according to Index award-winning Hungarian investigative news platform Atlatszo.hu. As virtually any piece of information can be used to build public policies upon, this gives the government a powerful argument not to answer FOI requests.
The bill also allows government actors to charge fees for fulfilling FOI request. Until now, government actors could ask for the copying expenses of documents. From now on, they can ask the person filing the request to cover the “human labor costs” of the inquiry.
It is not yet clear how much members of the public will have to pay. “There will be a separate government decree in the future regarding the costs that can be charged for a FOI request,” Tibor Sepsi, a lawyer working for Atlatszo.hu, says.
Because the public has no means to verify whether these costs are well-grounded, and at some government agencies the salaries are known to be very high, the government might be in a discretionary position to ask prohibitive costs for answering the FOI requests, critics of the amendment say.
“The FOI requests usually ask for data that are already available somewhere in electronic format, therefore no government body can say that fulfilling a request involves gathering information,” says Tamás Bodoky, the editor-in-chief of Atlatszo.hu.
“It is unacceptable to plead for extraordinary workload and expenses when much of the requests refer to things that should be published in accordance with transparent pocket rules. This information should be readily available in the settlement of accounts and reports,” he adds.
The work of investigative journalists and watchdog NGOs is further complicated through another provision, regarding copyright. In some cases, the government will be able to refer to copyright issues and only give limited access to certain documents, without making them publicly available.
While the bill will make life harder for those making FOI requests, Sepsi also points out that the situation is not as bad as it may initially seem: “The government will have half a dozen of new ways to reject vexatious FOI requests, but on the implementation level, ordinary courts, the constitutional court or the Hungarian National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information Authority will have the power to keep things under reasonable control.”
Nevertheless, Hungarian and international NGOs working for the transparency of public spending and government decisions are protesting against the bill. An open letter, signed by the groups Atlatszo.hu, K-Monitor, Energiaklub Szakpolitikai Intézet and Transparency International Magyarország Alapítvány has been sent to the Minister of Justice Trócsányi, to the Hungarian National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information Authority, as well as the MPs whose votes decided the fate of the proposal.
“We believe the government would do the right thing if – instead of rolling back on transparency – it would increase the so-called proactive disclosure, meaning that it would publish the information regarding its functioning in electronic format, without a request. We can provide international examples where this can be achieved simply, without extraordinary costs. This would increase not only the transparency of public spending, but the number of FOI requests would also decrease significantly,” the letter argues.
After the vote, a group of 50 opposition MPs pledged to ask the constitutional court to review the text.
Mapping Media Freedom
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Atlatszo.hu is an investigative news outlet founded and managed by Tamas Bodoky, the main goal of which is to promote free, transparent circulation of information in Hungary. The website, which receives around 500,000 unique visitors per month, acts as watchdog to a Hungarian government which has increasingly tightened its grip on press freedom in the country.
Atlatszo.hu produces investigative reports based on FOI requests, and instigates FOI lawsuits in cases where its requests are refused. In 2014, it has uncovered cases of state control of the media, election fraud, government corruption, tax fraud, and misuse of public funds.
Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, who announced intentions to build an “illiberal state” in summer 2014, has in the past year overseen the unexplained dismissal of a news editor who revealed expenses fraud within the government, and the introduction of new media taxes designed to cripple independent news outlets. His proposed “internet tax”, which would charge Hungarian citizens 150 forints (£0.37) per gigabyte of downloaded data, prompted countrywide protests in October. Critics saw the move as an attempt to curb freedom of information.
In 2014 the government also initiated a crackdown on Hungarian NGOs which were funded by Norwegian grants aiming to strengthen civil society in the poorer parts of Europe. These NGOs, several of which have been raided by police forces since July 2014, were accused by the government of acting on behalf of “leftist” foreign interests. The smear campaign against these NGOs was taken up by the country’s biggest media outlets, the majority of which are heavily influenced by the government.
Atlatszo.hu was included on the NGO blacklist, and Atlatszo’s partner organisation, the Asimov Foundation, was also investigated. Bodoky has quipped: “We are very glad to be included [on the list]. It would have been most embarrassing to be left out.”
Through the Asimov Foundation, Bodoky runs workshops with citizens and other NGOs in investigative journalism. The Foundation also solicits FOI requests from the general public using a request generator called KiMitTud (“Who knows what?”), through which around 1300 FOI requests are sent each year. In response to this service, the government introduced an amendment to Hungary’s FOI act in 2013 which allowed “excessive” requests for information to be ignored.
Atlatszo.hu also hosts platforms through which corruption can be easily and anonymously reported. MagyarLeaks, a Tor-based whistleblowing service, was launched in 2011 and prompted the government to investigate Bodoky and seize his hard drive. Late in 2013, a crowdsourced platform called Fizettem was launched, which allows everyday corruption such as police bribes to be reported anonymously.
“We are very proud of this nomination. We think that is very important to encourage critical media in Hungary,” Bodoky said in a recent interview with Index.
11 March: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the Asimov Foundation’s offices were raided. They were not.
Winning the Index Digital Activism Award has helped Atlatszo gain international attention. “We get a lot of press requests for quotes on important issues in Hungary,” says Bodoky. Staffers at Atlatszo have been acting as a source on the refugee crisis for international media outlets such The Guardian and have appeared on Al Jazeera’s Listening Post, a weekly programme examining the world’s media.