Vox: Hungary just passed a “Stop Soros” law that makes it illegal to help undocumented migrants

This week, Hungary passed what the government dubbed the “Stop Soros” law, named after Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros. The new law, drafted by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, creates a new category of crime, called “promoting and supporting illegal migration” — essentially, banning individuals and organizations from providing any kind of assistance to undocumented immigrants. This is so broadly worded that, in theory, the government could arrest someone who provides food to an undocumented migrant on the street or attends a political rally in favor of their rights. [...]

“We are fighting an enemy that is different from us. Not open, but hiding; not straightforward but crafty; not honest but base; not national but international; does not believe in working but speculates with money; does not have its own homeland but feels it owns the whole world,” Orban said in a characteristic anti-Soros tirade in March.  [...]

There’s still a lot of opposition to Orbán’s policies in Hungary, particularly in the capital city of Budapest. But Orbán is popular with a pretty significant chunk of Hungarian society. In the April 2018 parliamentary elections, the Fidesz party won a little under 50 percent of the vote. The next-closest party, the even-more right-wing Jobbik, won 19 percent. [...]

Soros’s aim, according to Orbán, is to undermine the soul of European Christian society — to hollow out the West from the inside out. Soros’s humanitarian activity is supposedly secretly indoctrinating Hungarians in a bid to let them acquiesce to mass migration. Once Soros and his allies succeed in opening the borders, Orbán warns, Muslim refugees will flood into Hungary and the rest of Europe — and soon the continent will become unrecognizable.

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The Guardian: Hungary is making a mockery of ‘EU values’. It’s time to kick it out

Consider the latest act in Hungary’s slide towards what its prime minister Viktor Orbán boasts is an “illiberal democracy”. The country’s parliament has not just passed a law making claims for asylum almost impossible: the very act of helping migrants and refugees has been criminalised. Furthermore, a 25% tax has been slapped on funding for NGOs that “support immigration”: in practice, that means having anything positive to say about immigration.

In the same week, the musical Billy Elliot was cancelled in Budapest after a vicious homophobic campaign by the pro-government press, including the claim in one government-linked newspaper that it could “transform Hungarian boys into homosexuals”. [...]

But Hungary, along with increasingly authoritarian Poland, is making an utter mockery of the EU’s stated commitment to democracy and human rights. In 2016 Luxembourg’s foreign minister called for Hungary to be expelled from the EU because of its treatment of refugees. He was right. Yes, the EU is buffeted by multiple crises, from Brexit to the assumption of power of a Eurosceptic Italian government. But its acceptance of its own member states succumbing to authoritarianism may prove its greatest existential threat of all.

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Social Europe: Germany’s Minimum Wage Has Reduced Wage Inequality

Average real wages increased in more than two-thirds of EU countries in 2015 but there were substantial differences across the region (see first column in table below). Wages grew in most eastern European countries and, indeed, to a much greater extent than in most western European countries, where wage growth was rather subdued or even negative, especially in Mediterranean countries; exceptions to this trend were Denmark, Germany, Ireland and France. Similarly, wage inequality declined in around two-thirds of EU countries (see final column in table), although there is no significant association between the changes in average wage levels and in wage inequality levels. [...]

Some groups within the workforce benefited more from this development than others. As the figure below illustrates, wage gains were significantly higher among the youngest and oldest age groups; employees with lower educational attainment; female employees; part-time employees; employees working in smaller companies; and employees in low-skilled occupational categories (blue-collar especially but also white-collar to a lesser extent). In terms of economic sector, employees working in services benefited greatly. For instance, those working in arts, entertainment and recreation saw the highest wage boost, although employees in other service sectors – including information and communication, and real estate, professional and administrative activities – also saw substantial gains. Increases among employees in construction and retail, though lower, were still higher than average. [...]

Moreover, the beneficial effects of the minimum wage policy on real wage growth and the wage cohesion of the German workforce seem to have come at no significant price. Employment data show the employment prospects of those employees who have benefited more from the introduction of the minimum wage have not deteriorated, proving that fears about the potential dis-employment effects of the policy were exaggerated. The German unemployment rate has indeed gradually declined from above 5% in 2014 to less than 4% in 2017, the lowest rate among EU-28 countries after that of the Czech Republic.

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Quartz: In India, gay dating apps are both a safe haven and a target

With internet and smartphone penetration on the rise in India, the LGBTQ community is increasingly taking to online dating sites to mingle. Already, around 1.4% or 69,000 of the five million users of US gay dating app Grindr and nearly 3% or 92,000 users of German app Planet Romeo’s three million users are in India. [...]

In July 2015, a gay maritime engineer was reportedly lured into a trap through an online dating service. He was attacked and extorted by two men while he was in a hotel room in Mumbai with a man he had met on a dating app. The attackers stole his possessions and emptied his bank account, and threatened to press criminal charges for having sex with a man if he went to the police. [...]

However, app-makers say they have put checks and balances such as verifying user identities and limiting app permissions online. Grindr, for instance, now has discreet icons that let users camouflage the app on their phones. But since homosexuality largely remains a taboo in India, it can still be hard to convince someone you meet online to take the next logical step offline. Some new apps are now finding a fix for just that. [...]

Twenty-seven-year-old Ishaan Sethi launched an app called Delta this April. The platform brings together like-minded individuals who can establish any relationship—friends, romantic partners, mentor-mentee—with its “Connect” feature.

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Al Jazeera: Who will Kurds vote for in key Turkey elections?

For the first time, voters in Turkey will cast ballots on Sunday in simultaneous presidential and parliamentary polls. The process is in line with last year's constitutional changes that will transform the country's parliamentary system to an executive presidential one by granting the top office increased powers. [...]

Demirtas, along with several other former HDP members of parliament, has been in jail since November 2016, accused of having links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). His trial began in December last year and, if convicted, he faces up to 142 years in prison. Demirtas denies the charges. [...]

Opinion polls have suggested that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AK Party might not achieve a parliamentary majority if the HDP manages to gain more than 10 percent of votes on Sunday, which is the unusually high threshold required for a party to enter the 600-seat assembly. [...]

Etyen Mahcupyan, a columnist and former adviser to the AK Party leader, said that secular voters might back the HDP at the ballot box to make sure that AK Party loses its majority in parliament - as it did in June 2015. [...]

"There is an increasingly widespread view that the HDP will surpass 10 percent of the votes. And this might decrease the number of the CHP voters changing their votes for the HDP," added Mahcupyan, who added that Kurds represent about 15 percent of the electorate in Turkey.

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