Anger in Hungary over radio station "closure," media policy

Dec 22, 2011, 19:39 GMT

Budapest - Several thousand gathered in the Hungarian capital Budapest on Thursday to protest what they see as the forced closure of a commercial radio station known for its critical stance towards the government.

Sympathizers for the liberal Budapest radio station Klubradio were joined by a group of hunger-striking state media reporters, at a rally outside the headquarters of state-owned Hungarian Radio.

Klubradio lost out this week in a bid to renew its broadcasting license, in a tender process adjudicated by a regulatory media council set up last year by Prime Minister Viktor Orban's conservative government.

Supporters of the station say it was the only liberal political forum on Hungary's airwaves. The rights to its FM frequency were awarded instead to a previously unknown firm with just 4,250 dollars of registered capital.

This year, hundreds of reporters and other employees of state-owned media have been laid off under a centralizing drive that the government says was a necessary streamlining of services.

The television workers' union leader Balazs Navarro Nagy - who began a hunger strike earlier this month after a former chief justice was digitally removed from the background in a video news broadcast - spoke at the demonstration.

'All democrats, regardless of their politics, must say no when any power, on whatever pretext, tries to silence media they do not like,' Navarro Nagy said.

Orban's government came in for international criticism in January after using its two-thirds parliamentary majority to push through a Media Act widely perceived as an attempt to stifle dissenting voices.

Several parts of the law were struck off by Hungary's constitutional court on Monday, but the government has already proved willing to use its super-majority to rewrite the constitution at will.

A series of peaceful protests against the media law have drawn tens of thousands onto the streets of the Hungarian capital.

The most recent, on October 23, was joined by unions and other groups with a wider range of grievances against what they see as an increasingly authoritarian government.