Hungary delays vote on 'transparency law' until autumn

Euronews

a day ago

Shock over the murder of a Tunisian hairdresser in a village near the French Riviera last weekend continues to reverberate throughout the Western European country, as authorities condemn the crime as fuelled by hatred.
After the 46-year-old Hichem Miraoui was shot dead near his home in Puget-sur-Argens in southern France on Saturday, one of his neighbours has claimed responsibility for the attack, in which a man of Turkish background was also injured.
In videos posted on Facebook shortly before his arrest, the suspect, identified as Christophe B, 53, used racist language and appeared to incite French citizens to conduct further acts of violence against Muslims.
French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said on Tuesday that the murder was 'clearly a racist crime', 'probably also anti-Muslim' and 'perhaps also a terrorist crime'.
The national anti-terrorism prosecutor's office (PNAT), which opened in 2019, launched a probe into the killing this week, the first time it has done so for a murder that is thought to have been inspired by far-right ideology.
Since Miraoui's murder, Muslim communities across France have spoken of their sadness and fear.
In a statement released on Tuesday, the Rhône Council of Mosques said the crime was indicative of the 'troubling and increasingly hostile climate toward citizens of Muslim faith in France'.
Meanwhile, Hafiz Chems-Eddine, Rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, called for 'urgent, national awareness of the dangers of xenophobic, racist, and Islamphobic rhetoric'.
'It is time to question the promoters of this hatred, who, in the political and media spheres, operate with impunity and lead to extremely serious incidents,' he said.
Islamic leaders also made a connection between Miraoui's murder and the fatal stabbing of the 22-year-old Malian Aboubakar Cissé in a mosque in southern France on 25 April.
In a video filmed while Cissé was dying, his French attacker criticised Islam.
Hungary's ruling Fidesz party has postponed a parliamentary debate and vote on a controversial bill aiming to limit foreign funding of media organisations and NGOs, the party's parliamentary leader has said.
A lawmaker in Prime Minister Viktor Orban's party last month filed a draft law entitled "Transparency in Public Life" that would allow the government to monitor, restrict, penalise and ban media outlets and NGOs it deems a threat to the country's sovereignty.
The draft legislation has sparked street protests, criticism from rights groups and warnings from the European Commission and the Council of Europe. The Commission last month demanded that the draft law be withdrawn from the legislative process.
The bill, which the critics have compared to Russia's "foreign agent" law, was originally set to be voted on in mid-June and was expected to pass as Fidesz holds a two-thirds majority.
However, Fidesz's parliamentarian Máté Kocsis said that there was debate within the party over which "legal instruments must be used to protect sovereignty" under the legislation.
The draft law had received many proposals in recent weeks, including from the Hungarian Banking Association, the Hungarian Advertising Association, the Office of the President of the Republic, the Hungarian Bar Association and the Hungarian Association of Newspaper Publishers, according to Kocsis.
"No decision will be made on the matter before the summer. Parliament will not vote on it," he said.
Hungary under Orbán has for years enacted crackdowns on NGOs and independent media, passing laws that critics argue seek to stigmatise and hinder groups that provide protection for women and minorities, offer legal and human rights assistance, and expose official corruption.
Those efforts ramped up in 2023 when Orbán's right-wing government launched the Sovereignty Protection Office, an authority tasked with investigating organisations and media outlets it deems to be exerting foreign influence.
Orbán, who polls show faces the biggest challenge yet to his power in elections set to take place next year, has claimed that foreign interests — primarily originating in the US and in neighbouring Ukraine — have sought to use independent media outlets and anti-corruption watchdogs in Hungary to influence public opinion with the aim of toppling him.
Such organisations have strongly denied such claims and argued that the work they perform is done to professional standards and in the public interest.
The bill introduced last month outlines a broad definition of what constitutes a threat to sovereignty.
Organisations could be targeted if they oppose or negatively portray values such as Hungary's democratic character, national unity, traditional family structures, or Christian culture — suggesting that even legitimate criticism of government policy could be treated as a national security threat.
Dozens of bodies have been discovered in detention facilities in an area of Libya's capital controlled by an armed militia, the UN said on Wednesday, expressing its concern about "gross human rights violations" including torture and enforced disappearances.
The UN human rights office said it was shocked by the discoveries at the official and unofficial detention sites run by the Stabilisation Support Apparatus (SSA) force in Tripoli.
The group's commander, Abdel-Ghani al-Kikli, was killed in fighting between heavily armed militias in the city in mid-May that left at least six dead, according to officials.
Subsequent clashes between state security actors and armed groups sparked protests calling for an end to violence in Tripoli, resulting in the deaths of several civilians and a police officer, as well as major damage to infrastructure, including hospitals, the UN said.
The UN rights office said it later received information on the excavation of 10 charred bodies at the SSA headquarters in the Abu Salim neighbourhood, with another 67 bodies discovered in refrigerators in the Abu Salim and Al Khadra hospitals. It also cited reports of a burial site at the Tripoli Zoo that was run by the SSA.
"Our worst held fears are being confirmed: dozens of bodies have been discovered at these sites, along with the discovery of suspected instruments of torture and abuse, and potential evidence of extrajudicial killings," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in a statement. His office said the identities of the bodies were unclear.
Türk called on Libyan authorities to seal the area to preserve evidence and said there needed to be accountability for the killings. He said the UN should be granted access to the sites to document rights violations.
The SSA is an umbrella group of militias that rose to become one of the most powerful groups in western Libya, which has a history of atrocities during the nation's long-running conflict.
It is affiliated with the Presidential Council that took power in 2021 with the Government of National Unity (GNU) of Abdulhamid Dbeibah in a UN-backed process.
The group's late leader, al-Kikli, who was known as "Gheniwa", has been accused by Amnesty International of war crimes and other rights violations over the past decade.
The clashes in Tripoli last month were the latest bout of violence in the largely lawless North African country, which has been plunged into chaos and division since 2011 following the 2011 overthrow and killing of longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi.
Libya has been divided for years between rival administrations in the east and west, each backed by armed groups and foreign governments.
Currently, it is governed by Dbeibah's internationally recognised government in the west and by the administration of Prime Minister Ossama Hammad in the east.