BBC’s correspondent in Budapest: Fidesz has opened Pandora’s box

In Hungary, it has always been difficult to stand in the centre. Now the ‘with or against us’ mentality is developing in the country again which was typical in the days of communist leader Mátyás Rákosi in the early 50s – said Nick Thorpe, BBC Central Europe Correspondent living in Budapest in his portrait interview to HVG.

Thorpe: Hungary is moving away from the European values

‘My first home is leaving Europe while the second one moves apart from the values of Europe’ – said the correspondent who was born in England and has been living in Budapest for 32 years. He decided to become a journalist after Mikhail Gorbachev was elected general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985. He arrived in Hungary in February 1986. Before he was studying in England and Senegal and

his original plans were to remain for half a year in Budapest.

However, he found love here, and he has five boys now.

According to him, the job of a journalist is to criticise the actual government. Because of this, he got himself in trouble many times during the Kádár-era. Furthermore, today the Fidesz-government is accusing him of

intervention in the domestic affairs of Hungary.

Lately, he has written a book on the topic of migration for which he has become public enemy No 1 in the eyes of the government.

He said to HVG that he came to Hungary in 1986 because it was a very exciting era and since he was the only Western correspondent in the country all of his articles were exclusive. His first sources were journalists who could not write anything but wanted their information to be published. For his reports, even the Hungarian communist party’s most influential daily, Népszabadság attacked him, and he was summoned in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.