People's Freedom Suspended

Image from hvg.hu

Publication of the largest opposition newspaper in Hungary, Népszabadság, was suspended Saturday, less than one week after a government-supported anti-immigration referendum failed to attract the constitutionally mandated minimum of 50% of eligible voters to the polls, and days after the paper had broken stories of corruption on the part of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's chief of staff and the head of the central bank.  Workers at the paper only learned of the suspension Saturday morning when they arrived to find the doors of the building locked against them.

In the press release that readers of the online version were redirected to this morning, the reason for the suspension was described as one of economics, but the journalists at the paper have characterized the move understandably as a "Putsch".   The paper was recently purchased by an Austrian group that is suspected to have ties with friends of the government who have been busily acquiring newspapers of late.

The bad news is that this brings the increasingly autocratic (and distinctly familiar from an American perspective in the Fall of 2016) Orbán closer to complete control over the press in Hungary.  The good news is, much as it happened 2 years ago in response to a clumsy attempt on the part of Orbán to raise the tax on internet use, a large, spontaneous protest materialized in the streets of Budapest.

The protest against the internet tax succeeded in causing Orbán to retreat from his plan.  It remains to be seen if today's protest will culminate in a similar stay of execution for Népszabadság in particular and press freedom beyond that, but it is almost a certainty in light of the Prime Minister's pattern of behavior that this will not be the last outrage.
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