Dunja Mijatovic, Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, is calling on the Hungarian authorities to scrap the Stop Soros legislative package submitted to the parliament on 29 May for discussion during June.
The bills in question target those organising illegal migration and, in particular, could impose prison sentences of up to one year for anyone assisting asylum seekers if the latter are not in immediate danger or if they have returned to Hungary illegally.
Dunja Mijatovic says this is “criminalisation of activity that should be fully legitimate in a democratic society” and which comes in addition to other measures as part of “stigmatising government rhetoric aimed at people who do professional and important work in Hungary, including in the field of human rights”.
The commissioner for human rights calls on the authorities to stop establishing “arbitrary restrictions to the work of NGOs and of those defending human rights” and to “adopt a more humane approach towards the needs of asylum seekers and of all migrants”.
In anticipation of this law pledged by the Fidesz campaign, the NGO Open Society funded by George Soros announced, for its part, in mid-May that it was moving its work to Berlin as a reaction to “the increasingly repressive political and legal environment in Hungary”. The American-Hungarian billionaire accused by the government of promoting a massive Muslim immigration plan in order to destroy the values of Europe is in fact the main target of the conservative prime minister, Viktor Orban, who has held power since 2010 and who has been recently re-elected by a landslide. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)