Abstract
The news is often full of unsuccessful stories of protest.
CREDIT: Rareş Helici/Facebook
The Power of Silence
With a new Romanian government just sworn in, writer Radu Vancu tells RACHAEL JOLLEY that he wants to inform the world that protests have the power to change everything
Romanian activist Radu Vancu, who took part in two years of silent protest
CREDIT: Rachael Jolley/Index on Censorship
Vancu, who is the spokesman for the protesters, as well as one of the organisers, said: “It’s rather surprising for us in Romania that this, our protest story, is a success story because we started in a state of complete hopelessness.”
When people around the world talk about protests not working, or giving up on freedom of expression because it doesn’t seem important, then my advice is to sit down with Vancu and listen to why he thinks differently.
As Index goes to press, the two years of weekly silent protests are on hold: Romania has a new government and the protest movement is giving it a chance to make good on its promises. The protesters have called on this new government to make sure every Romanian gets a vote (there were recent elections when people had to wait 12 hours to do just that); to re-establish the rule of law without loopholes relating to corruption; and to make sure mayoral elections are run fairly.
With Prime Minister Ludovic Orban sworn in at the beginning of November, Romanian activists are waiting hopefully. Right now, they believe their protests caused the last government to fall and that widespread public action is about to produce historic changes in Romania’s parliamentary democracy.
“If you protest long enough you win, actually,” said Vancu. “For me it is obvious. It creates a community of memory and of feeling.”
The protests started when a previous government, led by the Social Democratic (PSD) party, tried to introduce a law that would have protected politicians from being prosecuted for corruption of public funds for sums less than €200,000 ($220,361).
From January 2017, thousands of people massed outside to show their anger. On 1 February, the day after the new law was brought in, people poured onto the streets. An estimated 300,000 demonstrated that day, rising to 500,000 later in the month.
Vancu said: “We had witnessed how corruption is not something abstract, but something that has impact on some of the most concrete levels of life – on education, on healthcare systems, on emergency systems and so on. We felt that if the last fortress standing, that of the rule of law, is destroyed by corruption, then Romania is a failed state.
“So this was outrageous. We got out into the streets, we started fighting with them – they had shown us that they intended to do even more, to decriminalise some other dozens of corruption deeds in order to get all the politicians free of the consequences of their illegal facts.
“We reacted with despair, with hopelessness, with rage against this attempt to help the leader of [the] so-called social democrat party to be exempt from the punishments of corruption.”
It worked by bringing together all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds to work together – and by the fact that they kept going, week after week.
“We knew that we had to be effective in order to beat them,” said Vancu. “Being effective meant drawing in as many social classes, as many people, as many levels of education, ages, and so on, in order not to have only a middle-class protest but in order to have a protest unifying all people in Romania who felt that the country was going in the wrong direction.”
Once the alliance was created, they also looked at the tactics of being heard and being influential.
“It was really important for us to get the international press interested in us,” said Vancu. “We had support from important newspapers and televisions in the US, in the European area, and this really put pressure on the politicians because they don’t like to see their faces exposed there.”
International bodies including the US government and embassies from Germany, France and Canada began to speak out against the change in legislation.
Then the Romanian politicians decided to try to silence the protesters and their critics.
“They even tried to create a defamation law to forbid us to talk to the foreign press,” said Vancu. “It was a project which they eventually abandoned due to international press protests because European institutions said, ‘OK, you are a European country, you have a constitution stipulating the right to free expression so you should let people talk’.
“[The government] tried to make both normal citizens like me and European politicians coming from Romania in the European parliament shut up, and otherwise be imprisoned or taken from their positions.”
In the first few weeks there was no need to organise the protests: people were so fired up that they poured out onto the streets. But then, admits Vancu, they were hit by tiredness and they knew they needed a new approach. They decided to use a new, slower tactic.
“We announced we would come every day at noon in front of the PSD headquarters and stay there, silent, and watch them, watch the windows of the party, in order to show them that we see them, and we wanted it to be silent because we found it powerful symbolically,” he said.
A chair abandoned after a protest in Bucharest, Romania in 2018
CREDIT: Zsófia Börcsök
“If you keep silent they cannot manipulate silence: silence is pure, is clean, is effective, and we thought a silent protest would speak even louder.”
It did, and Vancu added: “We hoped this would create a network of silent protests in Romania, hopefully in all cities, because we thought, ‘it is simple, easy to organise, with a minimum of discussing the situation’.”
As well as the silent protests they organised discussions, which drew huge audiences online, where people would debate what could happen next.
And he has a message for those who think the rule of law and freedom of expression are not worth fighting for.
“The thing is, we don’t see the results immediately. We live in an age where we are used to pushing a button on a phone and seeing the immediate results… you protest now, and maybe in two years you will see the results. It is a long time for people – it is difficult to keep doing it.”
It might be contrary to the instant gratification we are used to but, in the end, he said: “You have a voice, and you have power, you regain your self esteem. You feel determination once again.”
Marshalling Orban’s Opposition
Budapest has a new mayor. JEMIMAH STEINFELD talks to activist Dóra Papp about how she helped get him elected despite pushback from the government
Activist Dóra Papp, whose organisation helped elect opposition candidates in recent elections in Hungary
CREDIT: Alberto Grosescu/Alamy
Part of the success of their community strategy is that they don’t just talk to people, they listen.
“When aHang start a petition, it means we also survey people. If people are not reacting, the signatures are not high enough, that topic is basically not ready yet to take off,” said Papp.
When Papp says “take off”, she is not mincing her words. Earlier this year they were contacted by the opposition politician Gergely Karácsony about the possibility of helping him organise the local governmental primary elections. The idea behind it was to coordinate the campaign – in order to challenge a rigged political system, a united opposition was key.
They weren’t sure whether they should get involved until they sent out a questionnaire, which approximately 2,000 people completed.
The majority supported their decision. In part as a result of aHang’s canvassing – which involved teaming up with 40 other organisations, a viral online campaign and hundreds of volunteers getting out onto the streets – Karácsony won the mayoral election in Budapest this October, ousting the ruling party incumbent.
The opposition also won a number of other Hungarian cities. This became the first major defeat for Fidesz in an election since 2006 – and the first time a civil organisation has organised a primary election in Hungary.
“Access to information as well as disinformation is a huge (and still growing) problem in Hungary”, she told Index.
“You have to find ways of shouting over the barricades,” she said.
The barricades really are as high as she says. In Hungary, independent media has almost disappeared and the main outlets are owned by government allies, university courses and academics are suffering (the Central European University had to relocate to Vienna last month), the arts are under attack – all the normal avenues of communicating information and challenging governmental power are basically cut off.
CREDIT: Gary Waters/Ikon
“If you’re not silent then we don’t have room for you,” is the message of the ruling party Fidesz, according to Papp, who said: “The only enemy in this system is the dissident who is open about their opinion, which is confronting the government.”
But people want to talk.
“People are really eager to be interviewed. They want to take part. Asking people what their needs are is really important,” she said.
Of course this can happen online, and aHang primarily use modern technology, but there is something about getting away from the screen and meeting people that is particularly effective.
“You get a connection with them,” Papp said.
The personal approach is desperately needed in Hungary. Fidesz and its leader, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, expound a right-wing traditional form of politics which, as Papp says, has seen the country’s marginalised being attacked.
Hungary’s Roma population is particularly singled out for ill treatment.
In 2013, one of the founders of Fidesz, Zsolt Bayer, called the Roma “animals… unfit to live among people” and the party turns a blind eye to the hate crimes that the Roma experience on a day to day basis. Refugees and migrants are also at the receiving end of ill treatment, with Orbán describing them as “poison”.
And Papp adds that this margin-alisation extends to women.
“Women should be mothers and bear children. They should be part of this brainless framework. It’s Desperate Housewives: the Fidesz version,” she said.
But the very people who should be out voting, or having their voices heard in other ways, are often not. This was evident in 2016, when less than half the voting population turned out for a referendum on whether Hungary should close its doors to refugees. It had one positive – with such a small turnout the result was declared null and void.
Had more people turned out it could have been very different. As it stood, 98% of voters sided with Orbán and, even though the vote was not legally binding, he saw it as a personal victory. Where were the voices of those who did not side with him?
aHang took on low voter turnout within Roma communities ahead of the 2018 general elections. They teamed up with Roma celebrities and made a series of videos as part of a campaign to call on people to vote. They wanted to talk to them directly, and in a way that they could relate to. Papp said that many people within the community had never voted and did not know there were other options beyond Fidesz.
Of course not all are receptive to the more personal approach, which Papp acknowledges. And yet even when the response might appear frosty, the result can be positive. This year, for example, aHang activists, together with members of the public, managed to pressure the National Roma Self-Government to reinstall a memorial plaque which commemorated six Roma who were murdered in 2009.
They did this through a multi-pronged strategy which involved continuously knocking on the door of the local government. The door never opened and so they decided to cover it with their messages. Without any acknowledgement, the plaque was reinstalled.
It’s all about getting people to identify a case in whichever way is best, says Papp, who also works in the arts and tells Index about the value of “feeling your audience”.
The real test will come in 2022, when Hungarians go to the polls for their next general elections. With two years to go, can they talk to enough people to help fully change the tide of politics in Hungary?