Csorba Zolt\u00e1n, a Hungarian civil servant, has recently lost his job because of his political views (own photo).It seems that in Hungary, the official propaganda regarding the
\nstruggle between the Central European University (CEU)
\nand the Orban government, has started to have serious repercussions not only on
\npeople connected to the University, but other progressive political groups. <\/i><\/p>\n
Roma news portal Romnet has recently had two
\ncases brought to its attention in which employees in the civil sector were seemingly
\ndismissed in part because of their CEU affiliation. Taken together with another
\nsimilar and widely reported occurrence that relates to a local civil servant pushed
\nout of office because of his association with the newly formed Momentum
\nMovement, such instances reveal a pattern of unacceptable political pressure on
\npublic employees. They are forced to limit their involvement with any
\ninstitution or political faction disliked by the current Hungarian government
\non pain of losing their employment. <\/p>\n
According to Romnet\u2019s informants, some of whom declined to be
\nidentified, the Hungarian government cannot cope with criticism. Those people
\nwho don\u2019t fit into its complex system of client-patron relationships and are
\nconnected to institutions that are deemed to be anti-government, can easily become
\npersona non grata, and are then removed from any position of influence.<\/p>\n
The most recent, controversial case reported by Romnet concerns Zoltan
\nCsorba, a civil servant at the Hungarian Ministry of Human Resources, who was
\nsummarily dismissed a few days ago for his views on the Hungarian government\u2019s
\npolicies and his association with the ill-fated CEU. Mr Csorba told Romnet that
\nhe had been the target of a sustained series of personal political attacks
\nsimply because he voiced professional criticism towards the Ministry\u2019s social
\nintegration program and also, as he was openly told, because he worked as a freelance
\nlecturer for the CEU. Following his dismissal, Mr Csorba turned to the courts
\nand the Hungarian Equal Treatment Authority. <\/p>\n
He holds a degree in political sciences
\nand since 2014 has worked for an organisation closely connected to the
\nHungarian Human Resources Ministry as a manager in one of its Roma integration
\nprograms, where he voiced a number of views regarded as controversial by his
\nemployer. However, a closer look at Mr Csorba\u2019s previous career reveals that he
\nwas no stranger to whistleblowing and that he had already suffered for exposing
\ninstances of official corruption and wrongdoing. <\/p>\n
From 1997 to 2011, Mr Csorba was in charge of the Roma Youth
\nIntegration program of J\u00f3zsefv\u00e1ros, one of Budapest\u2019s local authorities. The program offered
\nafter-school activities to hundreds of Roma students, but the local government
\nsaw fit to stop the service in the Spring of 2011, a move that our informant
\nbelieves was politically motivated. \u2018A great number of programs that allowed
\nRoma youth to sit higher education exams were terminated suddenly, at the
\nstroke of a pen, in the worst possible moment for our students, right before
\nthe university entry examination season\u2019 he complained at the time to news
\nportal Sosinet. Mr Csorba saw the closing of this program as a personal witch
\nhunt against him since he was openly opposed to the policies of the National
\nRoma Minority Self-Government, a government puppet institution dominated by
\ngovernment spokesperson Florian Farkas and his organisation, Lungo Drom. The group has been mired in controversy and accusations of corruption ever since and has recently had to pay
\nback a large amount of European funding because of embezzlement.<\/p>\n
After several years of working for a now defunct government
\nquango, the T\u00fcrr Istv\u00e1n Training and Research Institute, Csorba was transferred
\nto another government background institution, the Directorate-General for
\nSocial and Child Protection (SZGYF), and recently was put in charge of the institution\u2019s
\nMentoring Network program. \u00a0This program
\nwas meant to employ 110 professionals, mostly of Roma ethnicity, who would help
\nin the integration of marginalised families at a county level. However, in
\nspite of being a senior manager, Csorba told us that the Director General of
\nSZGYF failed to involve him in any decision-making pertaining to his work and
\ndid not allow him access to crucial information such as the initiative\u2019s budget
\nand long term plans. <\/p>\n
According to Csorba, his first conflict with his superior came
\nabout after he questioned the logic of hiring as local mentors a number of
\npeople closely connected to the now discredited National Roma Minority
\nSelf-Government, who had almost zero qualifications and experience in the
\nroles, while other, highly qualified and experienced, mostly Roma, candidates
\nwere sidelined on what Csorba considers the discriminatory grounds that their
\ndiplomas may be \u2018fake\u2019. Csorba found it unacceptable that yet again, a program
\nmeant to reach the grassroots mainly Roma communities, was turned into a
\nmoney-spinner for a well-connected political elite. <\/p>\n
Already in a meeting back in February to discuss this matter, Zsolt B\u00e1tori,
\nDirector of SZGYF indicated that he was considering dismissing Csorba since
\n\u2018highly positioned politicians have objected to his status within the project\u2019.
\nFurther Mr B\u00e1tori thought that it was a problem that Mr Csorba had stood for
\nlocal elections in the past; and that in a previous job application for a
\nmanagement job with a Budapest-based government organization dealing with Roma
\nEducation and Culture (FROKK), he had formulated a strong critique of the political
\ndecisions taken by local politicians in Budapest\u2019s 8th district local
\ngovernment. Mr Csorba also said that his employer, SZGYF objected to the fact
\nthat he worked as a freelance language tutor for the CEU, as the Ministry\u2019s
\nbackground institution had recently been subject to \u2018significant pressure\u2019 in
\nthis respect. <\/p>\n
Due to internal restructuring, Csorba\u2019s employment with SZGYF was
\nsubject to a recent contract, and at the time of his dismissal he was on
\nprobation. He found himself under intense pressure to resign because of what he
\nregards as politically motivated objections to his work. Finally he did so
\nunder duress, knowing that within weeks, his employer would formally dismiss
\nhim anyway due to his known connections with the CEU. <\/p>\n
Romnet recently reported another case in which a manager in
\na Hungarian state institution felt obliged to comply with real or imagined
\nofficial directives by sacking an employee simply because he had a Masters
\ndegree from the beleaguered CEU.<\/p>\n
A reader and personal acquaintance of Romnet,
\nwho declined to make public his identity, informed the portal that a week ago
\nhe was called in to meet with the head of his institution where he was told
\nthat his contract will be dissolved because the organisation cannot employ
\npeople who are in any way connected to the Central European University. The
\nemployee reported that his manager regretted the decision, but felt obligated
\nto let him go as a result of an official directive. The manager also promised
\nthat he would help find his employee a new workplace through his own contacts. <\/p>\n
The employee who had acquired his Masters at the CEU between
\n2010-2014 (during the \u2018second Orb\u00e1n regime\u2019), said that he had not made any
\npolitical comments at work, and that in the past his managers had been happy
\nwith his performance. Due to his extensive knowledge of foreign languages
\n(English, German and Italian), he had been frequently asked to represent his
\ninstitution abroad, so he was completely confounded by the decision of his
\nsuperiors. <\/p>\n
Although for now the Romnet reader chooses not to disclose his
\nname or that of his employer, he has also said that later he would be willing
\nto go public with his story because he finds in unacceptable that leaders of
\nstate institutions are in a position to threaten or bring reprisals against an
\nemployee simply because of their need to comply with the current government\u2019s
\nline. <\/p>\n
He considers his dismissal illegal and a clearly political
\ndecision, linked to the fact that he studied at the university that the
\ngovernment refers to simply [and erroneously] as the \u2018Soros University\u2019. He
\nfeared that hundreds of graduates could be similarly dismissed within days
\nsince many CEU graduates work in the public sector, including government
\nspokesperson Kov\u00e1cs Zolt\u00e1n. Romnet\u2019s informant also commented that he feared
\nmore public institutions will start reprisals against such ex-CEU graduates who
\nhave taken part in the recent demonstrations to support their alma mater. Romnet\u2019s
\nsource said he would turn to the courts for unfair dismissal. <\/p>\n
Recently the Hungarian media has also covered widely the case of
\none of the members of the Momentum Movement, Andr\u00e1s Pencz, who was dismissed from his workplace, the local authority
\nof Budatet\u00e9ny, for collecting signatures in the recent NOlimpia campaign
\nagainst Budapest\u2019s 2024 Olympic bid. Thanks to the great number of signatures
\ncollected from the citizens of Budapest, the Momentum Movement erupted into the
\nlimelight by scoring what some see as a major victory against the FIDESZ
\ngovernment.<\/p>\n
Pencz had worked for the local authority for more than a year
\nwhen he was dismissed shortly after Momentum delivered the anti-Olympics
\npetition to the authorities. In his written dismissal notice Mr Pencz was told
\n\u2018You are an excellent colleague and we are happy with your work. However, this
\nissue [that you are involved in] is important for our municipality. [Given that
\nwe are] a small town, we cannot maintain this relationship [with you] because
\nof the Olympics\u2019. <\/p>\n
These are no isolated cases in Hungary\u2019s current political
\nclimate. Although it is not at liberty to disclose the details, Romnet has
\nknowledge of other citizens, even elected political representatives, who have
\nbeen subjected to severe pressure from the authorities and have had to modify
\ntheir political behaviour under threat to their personal and professional life.\n<\/p>\n
These events, taken together with the open attacks on liberal
\ninstitutions and civil society, paint a grim picture of life under the Orb\u00e1n
\ngovernment, one where the public\u2019s right to free speech is under sever threat
\nand where being in the wrong place at the wrong time as well as any kind of
\nopposition political activism can land one in big personal trouble.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Csorba Zolt\u00e1n, a Hungarian civil servant, has recently lost his job because of his political views (own photo).It seems that in Hungary, the official propaganda regarding the struggle between the Central European University (CEU) and the Orban government, has started to have serious repercussions not only on people connected to the University, but other progressive…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}