IN 2017, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán declared billionaire George Soros and his Open Society Foundation (OSF) persona non grata, which effectively barred them from entering the country ever again.
Also, in 2015 Russia outlawed “undesirable” foreign or international organisations that allegedly undermined Russia’s security, defence or constitutional order. Besides Russia and Hungary, the OSF is illegal in China and Singapore and is on a government “watch list” in India.
Hungary is located at the far-eastern frontier of the EU together with Poland and Belarus (a non-EU member). Due to their location, Hungary and its neighbours are in a difficult position to enact stricter migration policies to cushion the supranational state from the former east bloc countries, the Middle East, Asia and beyond.
Hungary’s actions were widely criticised because Orbán had tampered with the sanctified rules of global liberalism: to ban a civil society group from operating freely in his country.
The harsh responses by several governments to the activities of the OSF bring to light the role of civil society and democratic participation. The concepts of “civil society” and “democratic participation” are often used interchangeably and are sometimes treated to mean the same thing.
In a world order that the West and its epistemologies dominate, terminologies carry fluid meanings depending on the situation or political goals that must be
