WARSAW - The presence of tens of thousands of Hungarians protesting in the streets of Budapest is adding pressure on the right-wing government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban to drop plans to tax Internet use, a move that protesters said would choke off access to sources of news and information not controlled by the government and its allies.
'This is limiting free access to the Internet and information,' said Balazs Gulyas, 27, a former member of the Hungarian Socialist Party who set up a Facebook page last week that inspired the protests. 'It is an attempt to create a digital iron curtain around Hungary.'
Mr. Gulyas's page had attracted more than 230,000 followers by Wednesday afternoon, a day after a large demonstration in the capital, giving it more followers than Hungary's governing party, Fidesz. 'We have shown, not only on Facebook but also in the streets, that the people won't have any of this dumb tax,' he said.
The government denies that the tax was devised to inhibit access to information, saying it is extending an existing tax on telephones, to address a growing share of communication that has moved online.
Zoltan Kovacs, a government spokesman, described the protests as an attempt by the country's splintered opposition to organize around a movement that it pretended was nonpartisan. Mr. Gulyas, he said, is 'but one of the many political activists who try to camouflage a political movement as civilian.'
Mr. Gulyas responded by saying that he was acting on his own. 'I have created the Facebook page and the event entirely of my own initiative,' he said.
Mr. Orban won a second consecutive term in April when his Fidesz party and a small conservative ally gained a two-thirds majority in Parliament, which effectively allows it to pass whatever laws it wants. It has come under increasing criticism from opponents at home and from many Western governments, including Washington, for its authoritarian impulses.
This month, the United States Embassy in Budapest said it would deny visas to six Hungarian officials in response to 'credible evidence' that they had been involved in attempts to elicit bribes from American companies.
The appearance of M. André Goodfriend, the chargé d'affaires at the United States Embassy in Budapest, at an earlier protest against the bill on Sunday inspired a heated exchange on Twitter between him and Mr. Kovacs.
'Checkin' the mood, André?!' Mr. Kovacs asked in a post on the social network, asking why the diplomat attended a demonstration organized by 'liberals' and the Socialist party. 'As Chargés d'Affaires? Interesting. Eh?'
Mr. Goodfriend responded, from his own Twitter account: 'When I want to influence, I speak. Otherwise, I'm listening. Sometimes, there's not enough listening.'
On Wednesday, Mr. Kovacs tried to play down any acrimony between his country and the United States. 'We believe that it's a mutual interest to sort out the problems we are encountering,' he said.
The domination of most print and broadcast outlets by the government and its close allies troubles many Hungarians, said Tamas Bodoky, the editor of Atlatszo.hu, an investigative reporting web portal.
'The Internet is the only remaining media in Hungary where information can flow freely,' Mr. Bodoky said, 'and there are concerns that the government might want to control this as well.'
Under the bill proposed by the government last week, which followed tax increases in banking, energy and other economic sectors, data would be taxed at the rate of 150 Hungarian forint a gigabyte, or about 62 cents.
After an initial protest on Sunday that drew about 10,000 people, the government said it would alter the proposal to cap the tax at 700 forint a month. The ceiling would apply to each Internet subscription, whether on computers, mobile devices or cable services.
Government officials say the tax would be levied on Internet providers, not customers. Their critics, however, say it is inevitable that any taxes would be passed on to consumers.
None of the back and forth appeased the demonstrators, who turned out in much larger crowds on Tuesday and in a growing number of cities.
'The move is part of the Orban government's increasingly repressive efforts to control and punish independent media and civil society watchdog groups through both legal and economic means,' the organizers of the protest said in a statement. 'It follows a wave of alarming antidemocratic measures by Orban that is pushing Hungary even further adrift from Europe.'
The organizers specifically mentioned the new media tax, which they said was an attempt to silence critics, and a recent spate of investigations and police raids on groups and nongovernmental organizations that the government has accused of misusing funds.
'A lot of people feel that the Internet has been a sort of refuge,' Mr. Gulyas said, 'and now the government is interfering with that.'
Posted by Unknown on Wednesday, October 29, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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