WEBINAR 8: HUNGARY & POLAND - A Personal Story about the Impact of Anti-NGO Measures Targeting Hungarian Human Rights Defenders
Eszter KIRS
23 November 2020
Since 2010, based on its constitutional supermajority, the Hungarian Fidesz-KDNP government has systematically undermined fundamental institutions of the rule of law and democracy. The centralization of power has been coupled with restrictive measures on media freedom, parliamentary debate, freedom of assembly, and the deterioration of independent institutions.
Civil society organizations have played a central role in advocating for human rights and the rule of law. Therefore, it has been a logical step of the authoritative government to attack civil society organizations by (i) a smear campaign; (ii) denying access to state authorities and places of detention; and (iii) legislation threatening NGOs and their staff members with severe sanctions. Instead of an objective description of the anti-NGO measures, which is available elsewhere, the present post will provide an insight into the impact of governmental attacks on the professional life of human rights defenders from the personal perspective of a legal officer of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (HHC) established in 1989, a leading human rights organization in the Central and Eastern European region.
I am one of many experts who were listed in a 2018 article of the Figyelő, a weekly magazine close to the government. The list printed on black background included lecturers of the Central European University, employees of NGOs, such as the HHC, Amnesty International Hungary, Transparency International and the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU): described by the government as “mercenaries” of George Soros, enemies of the nation, and serving foreign interests. I was proud to be on the list of smart and inspiring people who devoted their work either to academic research and education or the protection of human rights to the best of their knowledge.
In 2019, I attended a commemorative scientific conference at the University of Debrecen, where we discussed the failures of the state authorities to diligently address and investigate the 2008-2009 series of murders committed against Roma people by a group of extremist offenders. The local unit of the Fidelitas (the governing party’s youth wing) demonstrated against the speakers of the event, again described us as “Soros mercenaries”.
The above are just examples of the smear campaign framing staff members of human rights organizations and others who openly criticize governmental policies. HHC has successfully sued the government multiple times for disseminating false allegations about the organization. Smear campaigns might have a chilling effect but HHC and other Hungarian NGOs has not backed off. It is not the public and unjust verbal attacks but the attempts to undermine our work that is more painful, for which I introduce two examples.
No More Monitoring Visits to Detention Facilities
One of my very first assignments at the HHC in 2012 was to conduct interviews with prisoners for research on ethnic discrimination within the penitentiary system. An interviewee was a reserved, quiet, young boy, who was not complaining about anything related to detention conditions. Later I learned from his personal file that he was from an extremely poor family. He had been in a juvenile prison for minor crimes for two years. Other detainees were repeatedly harassing him, and he suffered from the additional psychological burden of having been refused permission to attend the funeral of his father who passed away while he was detained. He attempted suicide. While I was reading his suicide note, in which he said goodbye to relatives who could not visit him for months, I was literally crying above the file, and decided to invest as much personal capacity as possible into the monitoring activities of the HHC so that I can contribute to the efforts to ameliorate detention conditions.
Some of my colleagues had decades-long experiences in monitoring detention facilities. Learning from them, I also realized just how valuable the competence possessed by the organization really is. The expertise was gained through more than 2000 monitoring visits conducted by the HHC in closed institutions. We had access to these institutions based on cooperation agreements with central authorities. The one between the HHC and the National Penitentiary Headquarters was concluded in 1999 and repeatedly re-concluded afterwards granting constant access to penitentiary institutions.
In prisons, we usually spent two full days, and were entitled to enter any unit of the visited institution and to conduct confidential interviews with the detainees. In my personal story of visiting prisons for five years, the most impactful case was in Márianosztra, 70 kms to the North from Hungary’s capital, Budapest. We visited its High Security Prison three times in four months in 2016 due to the suspicion of severe ill-treatment. Interviews with inmates and the review of individual cases gradually revealed the everyday routine of physical and verbal abuse. As a sanction for minor misconduct, detainees were taken into solitary confinement, stripped naked, beaten, and left there for long hours sometimes in their own urine. Unidentified security guards wearing full face masks were marching up and down in the prison with the aim of enhancing a threatening environment.
As a consequence of our monitoring report, the National Penitentiary Headquarters conducted a separate monitoring visit at the Márianosztra prison, removed its head, installed cameras, and obliged the institution to cease the practice of regular use of solitary confinement and employing unidentified, face masked guards. When I heard about the result of our monitoring visits and report, I felt direct feedback from reality about the meaning and significance of our work in independent monitoring.
We have not had the chance to achieve such direct impact on the protection of human rights through monitoring visits in detention facilities from 2017 on. Even though the cooperation agreements served the interests of both the national authorities and the detainees, and most of the agreements were concluded for an indeterminate term, the national authorities terminated unilaterally in the course of four months four significant agreements: the agreements concluded with the Immigration and Asylum Office, the National Police Headquarters, the National Penitentiary Headquarters and the tripartite agreement concluded with the National Police Headquarters and the Central European Regional Office of the UN’s refugee agency, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Consequently, the HHC ceased to be entitled to carry out monitoring visits to police detention facilities, penitentiary institutions, immigration and asylum jails, reception centres for asylum seekers and the Border Guards’ immigration detention facilities. From 2017 on, all the valuable competence and unique experiences of Hungarian human rights defenders could not have been utilized for the sake of the protection of human rights due to a political decision to explode the well-functioning cooperation between state authorities and a civil society organization labelled as enemy by the government. The access to detainees and information on detention conditions has been reduced to FOI requests and complaints through which prisoners seek for HHC’s legal assistance in individual cases. In addition, the organization strives to discover innovative methods such as reaching out to former detainees after their release and to relatives of detainees.
No More Training for Judges, Prosecutors and the Police
My personal affiliation with academic institutions as a lecturer in public international law and my dedication to education have made me particularly interested in professional trainings organized by the HHC. We have been active in capacity building for judges, prosecutors, the police and attorneys in particular subjects, such as the efficient prosecution of hate crimes, communication of lawyers with the police and clients, the rights of defendants to a lawyer or the right to information and plain language. The professional experiences gained by HHC’s lawyers in strategic litigation at the domestic and the international level have enriched the trainings. This has had utmost importance in transferring knowledge about the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice.
My academic research interest in the subject matter of hate crimes facilitated the preparation of a number of judicial trainings for which I was personally responsible. They were organized in the framework of transnational projects; the first one run in 2015-16 in cooperation with colleagues from Greece, Italy and The Netherlands. In-depth research into international standards and domestic judicial practice in addition to exchange about the project countries’ best practices were channeled into the development of training materials.
The trainings were interactive filled with role-plays and case study exercises, which was an innovation in Hungarian judicial trainings due to the long tradition of frontal education of a formalistic style (a number of participants shared that they were shocked upon arrival when they realized that the training would be different than usual having seen the room setting suitable for interactive discussions instead of formal lectures). Judges and prosecutors recruited by the Hungarian Judicial Academy arrived at the trainings from all around the country. Practitioners’ interventions were duly channeled into the discussions co-moderated by a judge from the Curia (the Supreme Court of Hungary) and a prosecutor who has been responsible for internal trainings on the topic. We had heated debates about conceptual and professional dilemmas related to challenging issues, such as the application of hate crime laws in cases where the victims are members of extremist right-wing organizations (are hate crime laws tools of minority or identity protection?).
The attendees expressed their utmost satisfaction, and the prosecutor moderator was so much inspired by our experiential methodologies that he continued organizing internal trainings with a reviewed approach. After all the positive experiences in fruitful professional cooperation in trainings with the national authorities, it took us by surprise when after the successful delivery of another judicial training on hate crimes in May 2017, the Hungarian Judicial Academy notified us in August that the next training, which we agreed on to deliver in September 2017, could not take place. By then, we had multiple rounds of preparatory meetings with the Academy, and a detailed plan for the sessions. Nevertheless, we did not receive any detailed explanation for why the event had to be cancelled.
The only triggering factors we could think of were the tendency of termination of cooperation by state authorities in compliance with the government’s anti-NGO propaganda and the pro-governmental media outlet’s articles about the efforts of “organizations connected to George Soros”, such as the HHC to manipulate judges through trainings. First, the person who presumes such manipulation has probably not met a single practicing judge or prosecutor. It would be impossible to brainwash fully competent legal professionals with years or decades of judicial or prosecutorial practice in a one or two-day training. Second, instead of manipulation, HHC has always striven to develop legal professionals’ knowledge and skills related to the application of law with due regard to the victims’ perspective and international legal obligations on human rights. Nothing more, nothing less, just the improvement of skills required for the diligent accomplishment of professional duties.
HHC continues to organize and deliver interactive trainings to defence lawyers facilitated by the cooperation with bar associations. At the same time, from 2017 on, judges, prosecutors and the police could not benefit from its trainings and professional expertise anymore. A high price to pay for the anti-NGO agenda of the government.
Conclusion
Several international stakeholders (including the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, the EU Fundamental Rights Agency, the CoE Commissioner for Human Rights or the Venice Commission) have raised their voice against the Hungarian anti-NGO governmental measures, with special regard to the legislation, which under the cover of the legitimate aim to ensure transparency of NGOs in fact would serve the restriction of their ability to carry out professional work in protecting human rights and the rule of law. In June 2020, the European Court of Justice held Hungary responsible for the violation of EU law by introducing discriminatory, unjustified and unnecessary restrictions on foreign donations to NGOs. To date, the anti-NGO laws have not been repealed and hostile propaganda is maintained. However, none of these developments decrease the commitment of Hungarian human rights defenders to continue acting with full professional integrity.
Eszter Kirs Ph.D. has been a legal officer of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee since 2013 where she has contributed to monitoring visits in detention facilities, international and domestic advocacy, and a number of transnational projects on the efficient prosecution of hate crimes, human rights trainings and the operation of National Human Rights Institutions. She is an associate professor at the Department of International Relations of the Corvinus University of Budapest since 2016. From 2003, she has been lecturing on international law and human rights at various academic institutions. From 2010 to 2015, she worked for a defense team at the ICTY. She was a Fulbright visiting researcher at the Columbia Law School in 2009-2010 and a visiting lecturer at the University of Minnesota Law School in 2019. She has published academic papers and two monographs in the fields of transitional justice and human rights.