Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has put a full-page ad in the picture-Newspaper addressed to the German public. Under the coat of arms of the Hungarian government and the title “On the future of the European Union”, seven “proposals” were listed in the Monday edition of the tabloid. For example, that Brussels wants to establish “a superstate”, but Budapest says “No to the European empire”. Orbán called on the EU to remove the objective of “ever closer unity between the peoples of Europe” from the EU’s basic treaties. Integration is a means and not an end in itself.
Orbán also wants to protect “the European people” from migration and pandemics and rejects the EU Parliament as a “dead end”; instead, the role of the national parliaments must be increased. On a final point, he called for Serbia to join the EU. A spokesman for picture-Verlag Springer with: “It is explicitly irrelevant whether we share the content of a booked ad or not – the sender of an ad is not us, but our booking customer.”
Orbán’s ad appeared exactly on the day that Reporters Without Borders (RSF) published its list of “enemies of press freedom”. Also listed: the Hungarian Prime Minister. “Since Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party came to power in 2010, they have gradually brought Hungary’s media landscape under their control,” criticized the association on Monday in Berlin.
According to the RSF, Budapest has combined almost 500 government-related media companies in the state-owned holding company MTVA. This also includes Hungary’s only news agency MTI. In addition, the regional press has been fully owned by Orbán-friendly entrepreneurs since 2017.
Hong Kong’s head of government and Brazil’s president are new on the list
The list of “enemies of the freedom of the press” includes 37 heads of state and government who put the independence of the media at particular risk and suppress the freedom of the press in a particularly drastic way. In addition to Orbán, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman are newly listed. RSF accuses him of crimes against humanity, among other things because of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
Hong Kong’s Prime Minister Carrie Lam is standing after the newspaper has been closed Apple Daily also on the list in June. Long-standing “enemies of freedom of the press” include Eritrea’s President Isaias Afewerki, China’s head of state and party leader Xi Jinping, Syria’s ruler Bashar al-Assad and the Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
All over the world, new names have been added that want to prevent critical reporting by using various methods of suppression, said RSF managing director Christian Mihr of the dpa. “This affects journalists, but also the population, who are denied access to independent information, which is so important in times of a global pandemic.” Reporters Without Borders has published the list at irregular intervals since 2001.