To: Members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
June 23, 2015
RE: Situation in Hungary following the adoption of Assembly Resolution 1941 (2013)
Dear Member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe,
Ahead of this week’s Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) consideration of the situation in Hungary, Human Rights Watch urges you to ensure that the country remains under special scrutiny by the Assembly.
As the draft resolution and report make clear, “not all the Assembly recommendations have been met”, and the Hungarian authorities should “continue their dialogue with the Council of Europe” and “endeavour to solve the outstanding issues.”
In light of this assessment, it is only logical for the Assembly to retain Hungary under scrutiny until such time as the outstanding issues have been fully resolved. Indeed, the concerns highlighted in the Assembly’s 2013 resolution remain largely valid to date. Where the Hungarian authorities have taken steps following extensive international criticism, such as on the media laws, the changes instituted have been largely cosmetic, leaving unaddressed the core problems identified.
Such outstanding problems include the risk of political bias in appointments to key positions in public institutions, such as the Media Authority (as also highlighted in the newly adopted Venice Commission opinion), the National Judicial Office and the Constitutional Court; significant curbs on media freedoms (as also detailed in the Venice Commission’s opinion); limitations on the powers of the constitutional court, bringing into question its ability to act as an independent check on the executive; constitutionally enshrined discrimination against people with disabilities, women and LGBT people; discrimination of religious groups; and criminalization of homelessness. Inadequate state response to domestic violence and widespread discrimination against Roma are also of serious concern.
For PACE to discontinue its engagement at this time would send a detrimental signal that it isn’t committed to seeing through the necessary reforms to address these serious problems.
But there is more to this than the imperative of ensuring that outstanding concerns are adequately addressed. Further backsliding on the part of the Hungarian government in the last twelve months has prompted renewed concerns about its commitment to uphold human rights and the rule of law, and make it all the more critical for the Assembly to retain the situation under close scrutiny.
Since its re-election in April 2014, the Hungarian government has continued to undertake a number of measures that deliberately undermine human rights protections, stepping up pressure on media and civil society, by imposing further curbs on media freedoms, including through an advertising tax that primarily affected one of few remaining independent TV channels in Hungary, and by pursuing a campaign of public smearing and aggressive financial inspections against independent organizations that receive or administer foreign funds.
More recently, the Hungarian government has made headlines by suggesting that reintroducing the death penalty is worth serious consideration, and by engaging in a virulently xenophobic anti-immigration campaign that has consisted of a national consultation involving a questionnaire that equates migrants with terrorists, a nation-wide billboard campaign that spreads messages such as “If you come to Hungary, you can’t take the jobs of Hungarians”, and the announcement, just last week, of plans to construct a 4-meter-high fence along Hungary’s southern border with Serbia to prevent migrants and asylum seekers from entering the country.
Against the backdrop of these deeply troubling developments, it would be detrimental both to the cause of human rights in Hungary, and to the credibility of the Assembly as an institution for it to abandon its work on Hungary at this time. It would also be at odds with other international institutions and actors – from the European Parliament to the Council of Europe Commissioner for human rights to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights – who have rightly intensified, rather than lessened, their engagement with Hungary over its rights record in recent weeks.
We sincerely hope to count on your support to ensure the Assembly fulfills its important role to help secure the steps needed to bring Hungary’s laws and policies into compliance with its obligations as a Council of Europe member state. The people of Hungary deserve nothing less.
Thank you for your attention to this pressing matter.
Sincerely,
Hugh Williamson
Director
Europe and Central Asia Division
Human Rights Watch
