Civil society groups in parts of Eastern Europe and beyond -- long targeted by discredit-and-defund campaigns because of the light they shone on corruption and lack of transparency -- are now also dealing with Trumpian rhetoric, they said.
From Hungary to Serbia, Georgia and Bosnia, non-governmental organisations and independent media outlets working to bolster democratic norms are hearing officials borrow White House phrases to justify officials' stances against them.
It includes Trump’s claim that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) was “run by radical lunatics”, and his billionaire advisor Elon Musk’s calling the agency a “criminal organisation” that needed to be put “through the woodchipper”.
Verbal ammunition
USAID had been providing funding to a vast array of independent organisations in countries like Hungary where such groups have been “financially suffocated domestically,“ Ligeti told AFP.
Orban -- also Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest ally in the European Union -- has vowed to “eliminate the entire shadow army” he says is made up of his political enemies, judges, the media and NGOs.
It said that “it is all the more worrying to see these trends also emerging in established democracies”.
In some countries there is a direct line between utterances in Washington and action to undermine civil society.
The European Union’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas on Wednesday condemned the law, warning that it gave additional tools to the authorities to suppress dissent and tighten a “policy of repression”.
And in Serbia, which has been rocked by months of protests over government corruption, authorities referred to statements by Trump and other top US officials to justify raiding a number of NGOs.
CRTA's offices were raided in February by heavily armed police. The operation took 28 hours because prosecutors had CRTA staff manually copy documents related to USAID-funded projects to hand to them, rather than accepting digital versions.
“This is just an excuse to crack down on civil society,“ he said.
'Intimidation'
He said such groups were being doubly punished: they “lost their funding from one day to the next” while also increasingly being “targeted by intimidation”.
“Independent voices are being lost,“ with many organisations closing from evaporated USAID funding and swelling attacks, she said.
He warned that, “as these media retreat... they will be replaced by propaganda”.
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