TV Republika correspondents preparing coverage from Budapest are being subjected to surveillance, said Republika journalist Adrian Stankowski, who is currently in the Hungarian capital. “I was able to observe some of this behavior, see it live,” he added.
Former Minister of Justice and Prosecutor General Zbigniew Ziobro, together with his wife, as well as former Deputy Minister of Justice Marcin Romanowski, have received political asylum in Hungary. Reports from Budapest can be watched on TV Republika and, as it turns out, this may be bothering someone. Today on TV Republika, Adrian Stankowski, who is in the Hungarian capital, shared disturbing information.
“Our regular TV Republika collaborators who work here for you in Budapest are simply being surveilled. These are experienced people who know how to assess such things. And they assess that they are the target of actions by some services,” he said.
According to Stankowski, suspicious individuals stand near the residences of TV Republika collaborators, try to follow journalists, record videos, and take photos.
“I was able to observe some of this behavior, see it live,” Stankowski said. “Yesterday there was a situation in which our collaborators were being asked where Minister Ziobro was, and this happened despite Ziobro having clearly declared that he would give live statements to all media,” Stankowski said, adding that later there was “a series of phone calls not to Minister Ziobro, but to TV Republika collaborators.”
“This is extremely alarming, because surveilling the media and using services to control the work of the media is already the standard of some third-world despotisms, not a democratic country,” he concluded.