In the past five years, George Soros's foundations have have paid nearly one million US dollars in funding to NGOs helping prostitutes and members in Hungary, a report by the Atlatszo portal reveals. The Hungarian LGBTQ rights advocacy group called Hatter Society has repaid this support on several fronts, as Magyar Nemzet has pointed out, by criticising Hungary's child protection law both at home and abroad, in alliance with leftist-liberal forces.
Backed by George Soros's organisations, Hatter Society has worked with ILGA-Europe, an umbrella organisation for European sexual minority groups, to put pressure on the European Commission to launch infringement proceedings because of the child protection act.
In this context, Richard Barnabas, spokesman for Dialogue-Greens, Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony's party, clearly stated that the Hungarian government is engaged in a hate campaign against LGBTQ people, which is impermissible.
Similarly, politicians from the Momentum Movement have been calling for action against the child protection law. Two MEPs from Momentum, Anna Donath and Katalin Cseh, appealed in a video message to supporters, asking them to "say no to hate" and sign a petition calling for the law to be abolished. Hungarian LGBTQ organisations also did their part in the pressure exercise. The "civil sector" has been campaigning intensively from the outset, with Hungary's Hatter Society and Budapest Pride taking part. ILGA-Europe, an organisation bringing together European groups representing sexual minorities, admitted point by point that, together with the Soros-backed Hatter Society, they have invested a great deal of effort in working with member states to provide them with accurate information on the law and its evaluation, as well as with technical advice pertaining to the means of intervention and deadlines. They were able to use this to put pressure on EU member states to encourage the European Commission to launch infringement proceedings against Hungary.
Between 2016 and 2021, Hatter Society received almost 200 thousand US dollars in funding from George Soros's Open Society Foundations. The Hungarian organisation for the protection of prostitutes' rights, which works in close cooperation with LGBTQ groups, received a much larger amount of nearly 800 thousand US dollars from organisations linked to George Soros.
According to its agenda, the Association for the Protection of the Interests of Sex Workers considers it important to forge partnerships both in Hungary and abroad in order to effectively represent the interests of sex workers, including Roma people, members of the LGBTQ community, single mothers and other vulnerable groups. The association believes that sex workers should be conferred a legal status, that is, prostitution should be legalised in order to assert the rights of sex workers. With this step, they want to remove what they see as obstacles to "health and social care" for sex workers in Hungary.
Cover photo: Budapest Pride (Photo: Miklos Teknos)
