 Civil society organizations defending human rights are being increasingly targeted by repressive governments across the world. This movie will present some unbelievable stories about oppression, resistance and survival, told by human rights defenders who dedicated their lives to help the most marginalized groups of societies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. A good example for the repression of civil society in Hungary is how harm reduction organizations were treated after the change of government in Hungary in 2010. There was a massive change in the Hungarian drug market after 2010. Classical drugs such as heroin and amphetamine were almost completely replaced by other injectable new stimulant drugs. These drugs are injected more frequently. The demand for clean injecting equipment, needles went up. Harm reduction services in Hungary were not only threatened by budget cuts and lack of funding, but also because of political attacks. That was very evident in the case of District 8 where the local mayor, Mati Kočić, launched a political campaign against needle exchange operated by an NGO called Blue Point. He accused the needle exchange program of attracting drug users to the district and being responsible for drug litter and drug-related nuisance in the street. He also mobilized fake NGOs, kind of gongos to organize demonstrations against the needle exchange program. We don't need a point for the people of Józsefvárosi. They should leave the illegal drugs in the street until the end of the day. They should have human and meaningful support. As a result, the local NGO Blue Point had to close down. Just a few months later, the second largest needle exchange program also closed down. Based on complaints filed by civil society organizations, the Ombudsman for Fundamental Rights declared that these closures violate human rights and called to reopen the program. Just a few days after this statement of the Ombudsman was released, I discovered in one morning that the newspapers are full with accusations against us and against me personally. Claiming that I'm an agent of George Soros, I'm serving for an interest and they also leaked out some of the correspondence I had with one of the employees of the Ombudsman in a manipulated way. Saying that I manipulated the Ombudsman himself. I suddenly felt that I had to close down the drug lobby in the Ombudsman's office. And after that, I found out that the Ombudsman only wanted to be there. The Ombudsman even had to report to a parliamentary committee and he had to defend himself. And it was completely nonsense, of course. But it was a very effective strategy to silence us, to discredit us and to achieve that in the media there was no discussion about the real substance of the statement of the Ombudsman, but about my alleged relationship to the people who work in the Ombudsman's office. The dramatic decrease in distributed needles resulted in an outbreak of hepatitis C among injecting drug users. The prevalence of hepatitis C doubled among injecting drug users in Budapest in just three years. And most of these people who were the clients of needle exchange programs that were closed down in Budapest became completely invisible for the treatment system. Soon, not only harm reduction programs were targeted by government propaganda, but also virtually all non-governmental organizations which were critical of the government and served as democratic checks and balances of the rule of power. One of them was the NGO Okotars, which led the consortium that was responsible for distributing the grants of the Norway civil funds, which supports democracy and civil society in Hungary. It was a Monday. I got a phone call early in the morning when I was still at home from a police officer stating that she's here in the office, where am I? And I said that I didn't know they were coming, they didn't make an appointment, so by the time I got in I was kind of prepared for the fact that police officers were all around the place like more than 20 of them. They took away this pile of paper, which we only got back a year later. Okotars and later more than 60 other NGOs were investigated by the police, government audit office and the prosecutor's office, but in the end no charges were filed. Orbán's government and his media machine did not stop attacking NGOs, claiming that they are foreign agents serving foreign interests. We don't have civilians in our eyes, we don't have civilians with us in our eyes, but paid political activists who try to attract foreign interests in Hungary. Civil society organizations do participate in policy making. That's one of the roles of civil society, one of the classical roles of civil society, to speak up in public matters that affect people's life. The rhetoric has become important because foreign funded wouldn't necessarily mean a bad thing, but with the government's rhetoric that foreign funded also means that not serving Hungarian interests, actually serving someone else's interests, not Hungarian's, it becomes a label, it becomes a stigma on these organizations. In September 2015 the refugee crisis reached the borders of Hungary and thousands of asylum seekers appeared at the train stations. The government launched a massive anti-migration propaganda campaign and accused George Soros and civil society organizations funded by him of orchestrating and organizing the flood of migrants with the purpose of destroying Europe. We will not leave Soros until the end. They are accelerating the end of Soros. All of these organizations have to get back together, and I think they have to do so. This is a political strategy. They, with the help of political strategies, firms found the perfect enemy, who embodies the fears and sentiments of many of the members of the Hungarian public. In 2017 the Hungarian government adopted a new law which is based on a similar Russian foreign agent law. It required NGOs receiving foreign funding to register as such at a ministry website and put a label on their publications. Several affected organizations rejected to comply and initiated an infringement procedure against Hungary at the European Court of Justice. In 2018 the government adopted a so-called Stop Soros law punishing foreign funded NGOs which were helping asylum seekers. Access to justice and due process are fundamental European values and this legislation specifically targets that saying asylum seekers shouldn't be helped because if you help asylum seekers you face the risk of being thrown in jail. In spite of the continuous attacks, social approval of civil society organizations did not disappear and many people stood up for their cause. However, the attacks had serious negative effects on their daily work. The crackdown on civil society was met with an increasing global resistance from human rights defenders who are now trying to adapt to the new political landscape. Our NGOs or partner organizations in the country who say that we can help them but we cannot cooperate publicly. With state institutions and state authorities the cooperation completely froze. What you could see maybe mainly two types of responses. One is to stand up for yourself and to pick up the struggle and the other is try to distance yourself and remain neutral. There were even examples after the closure of needle exchange programs that a few activists and NGOs tried to distribute needles on the streets from the backpack but after they were left alone by donors and left alone by local and national government they were not able to continue services. In Eastern Europe and Central Asia most of the non-governmental organizations that provided support for the most vulnerable populations of society were funded by foreign donors. Donor withdrawal and shrinking space of civil society altogether results in the closure of the organizations providing these services. One such example is Kyrgyzstan where donor withdrawal may not result in transition to domestic funding. We observe the tendency in these conditions that when the first reduction is made organizations from the community get involved. We have a house that belongs to our organization. Based on this house we carry out a project on social interaction. People who get involved are probably the most vulnerable group in my opinion. People who are deprived of freedom who have a drug addiction, who have a status switch. People who are deprived of freedom are taught by us. We are taught by the state. We explain to people that we need to behave in such a way that we can hold on, socialize, learn to live in a new way after such a long period of time. No one does this because first of all they don't have the same experience that a person feels at that moment, they simply don't understand. The state doesn't know the problem that people who use drugs are experiencing. People who use drugs can't interact directly with the state because there were different moments. You are not a believer and a high-ranking assessment, that is, the stigma of discrimination, still exists. And we get a link between the state and the consumers. If we get rid of them, the connection will be broken and the consequences will be heavy. As opposed to the politically neutral position of Kyrgyzstan's authorities with regard to non-governmental organizations, the situation in Russia is completely different. Russian civil society actors are facing physical violence and informal harassment by both state security forces and non-state actors. They are forced to silence NGOs. Russia banned certain international donors from the country and introduced the foreign-injured law, which suffocates NGOs funded from abroad. This particularly affects NGOs delivering HIV prevention services to key affected populations, such as people who use drugs, sex workers and men who have sex with men. Although we as an organization we don't consider ourselves as any politically involved organization and we don't consider ourselves as being in an opposition to the government. We're just trying to do our activities and in accordance with our mission to save lives of people who use drugs to provide them with access to needed services for HIV prevention overdose and to try to make sure that they are being treated with dignity and with respect to their rights. Nevertheless, we have a long history of counteraction with the government. The Andrei Rylko Foundation is the only NGO providing needle and syringe exchange for people who inject drugs in Moscow as a city of 20 million people. In 2012, their website was banned in Russia because they were citing UNAIDS and WHO information on the effectiveness of methadone substitution treatment which is not allowed in Russia. In 2016, they were put on the foreign agent list claiming they're conducting foreign-funded political activity by advocating for methadone treatment. There's a hammer hanging on your head. You never know when it would fall down. So you always feel yourself under control. You always feel that maybe tomorrow they will find you for some violation of this law. The reaction of the NGO is different. I know that there were cases that some NGO decided to close themselves and to stop their activities. Other NGOs like our, for example, NGO were always happy to use such opportunity to fight back and to go to the court because we consider this as a violation of our rights and we don't agree with this definition of foreign agent and we don't consider ourselves as a traitor but we believe that we work to support the government, to stop the epidemic of HIV among people who use drugs in Russia. The Andrei Rylko Foundation won the first case against the fine for not registering as a foreign agent and the fund raised to pay the second fine of $12,000 for their so-called drug propaganda. If they are unable to collect more funds for such future fines they could be forced to close down. Russia's reluctance to fund any low threshold HIV prevention services for key affected populations has resulted in the fastest growing HIV epidemic in the region with 1.2 million registered HIV cases. About 70% of them are those who have the experience of injection drug use so not doing anything with that is like supporting the escalation of the HIV epidemics in my opinion. Vulnerable people in Russia are not only subject to state negligence but are terrorized by non-state actors as well. In St. Petersburg, a fascist group not long ago attacked sex workers with unimaginable cruelty. It was terribly scary. Even when he was in court behind the cage it seemed to me that he would get out of that cage as if it were new. When we were taken out of the apartment we were all happy that we were on the street and that someone would help us. One neighbor shouted, we will help you girls, I called the police. The only person who somehow responded was the police. The others just said, there were bruises. And the police, when we went out on the street there were two policemen who said, what is going on? They saw that we were naked and they asked, what is going on? They turned around and ran away. They just turned around and ran away. They blocked the doors because some girls wanted to run away to get into the car. They blocked the doors so that no one would get into the car. They took the car and left. The second car came up with the police. They said, what is going on? We were waiting for him on the street. He said, I am sorry, I am in the police department. You are doing the right thing. And again, when we were in the police station there were bruises, clothes and food. They brought silver roses. The lawyers brought silver roses again. If it weren't for them, we wouldn't know what would happen next. I want to convey that we are also people and all our problems. We are in this profession of loving sex. Because it is really hard for us. If it weren't for silver roses, I would be afraid. They called us. They threatened us openly. They called people. They called Datsaka's engine. They threatened us that they would burn us and kidnap us. They threatened us. They are taking care of children. It is DATAP. I was hit by various people. Another example of the severity of shrinking space for civil society is Poland. For the past four years, Poland's rating has been falling in international indexes, monitoring political rights and civil liberties. The Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights a Warsaw based watchdog organization monitors the situation closely and has also been affected by the current policies of the authoritarian government. This government doesn't like women and doesn't like migrants and refugees. Basically, any group prone to marginalization is under greater threat and the greatest risk that they used to be before 2015. Law and justice the Conservative Party which is now ruling in Poland has targeted migrants, women and also LGBTQ communities. Law and justice gave the signal that it is now free to say very unpleasant things and unpleasant things about the groups of minorities in Poland. Both people and institutions related to this industry simply have no sense of security. They have no sense that, for example, when there is a verbal or physical attack on them, the Police and Prosecutor have no sense of security in this situation. Unfortunately, there were very unpleasant situations which were physically attacked by organizations or active organizations when there were aggressive fights of people who didn't accept the responsibility and the police reaction was, let's say, very unpleasant. The police seems to be a useful and obedient tool in authoritarian regimes. Indulent when they need to provide vulnerable communities, the police turns to overacting when authorities want to send a clear message to the organizations hesitant to follow the way marked out by the Conservative Government. A day after one of the so-called black protests, gathering crowds of women demanding their rights, officers of the charity working to protect and empower women, including victims of domestic violence experienced unjustifiable police raids. I think there was a shock that there was a shortage of customers. We had to close the office and apologize to the customers because there could be an accident that could harm our customers. One of the young law enforcement officers who were a few days after that informed me that she would resign The Centre for Women's Rights together with a number of other civil society organizations like Political Critique which is also active in the drug policy field is on the black list of NGOs that can't count on state financial support nowadays and have been cut off from the ministerial grants. This has also heavily influenced the refugee-focused work of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights. The only available funds for providing legal and integration aid for migrants staying in Poland was operated by the government at the national level and those funds were effectively frozen. So in our case that meant that one third of our budget was cut which eventually led to very significant cuts in financing and then many people from this department left. Seeing the challenging situation of their colleagues and NGOs advocating for women, refugees or LGBTQ rights drug policy and harm reduction focused NGOs have been expecting the worst to come especially because their areas of focus are perceived as controversial and their work seen by the conservative part of the society as morally dubious. In order to prevent the possible attacks as well as the broader negative changes in the drug law, the Polish Drug Policy Network decided to hide a bit and resign from some of their advocacy activities. This led to a more targeted drug policy in our country. So in the fight for such a situation, we retreated from our activities in the same, in the vocational activities as in the media. All the messages of our organization were directed at the changes of the drug policy in the regional context. In the Polish regions, cities, but also in the general Polish context. We talked to the 13 regions and talked about what we worked on in the document of the Warsaw Declaration in order to jointly create a link to the local strategies. When advocacy work which addresses the central government is not an option anymore, organizations shift a closer cooperation with local authorities. This is also a strategy used by Jump93, primarily associated of current and former methadone patient but now also a harm reduction services provider. This all began to change and mainly about the city, about the government which, as you can see some security in the policy of the country. The fact that the survival of this active potential seems to me that the city in general wants to fight for independence and increase its competencies and this is useful. 50% of the service market in terms of help and treatment is in the hands of conservative organizations, old, well-known conservative organizations. However, the CUP is all the younger organizations who are trying to bring various innovations. These are often controversial, often without understanding the decisions of the officials who are doing CUP. In the context of deepening polarization we also see the rise of new kind of NGOs, far-right or groups very closely working, which very closely works work with the governing majority and this is something different from what we've observed in Hungary when in Hungary NGOs are presented scapegoats while in Poland the government has different strategy instead of attacking very particular organization they decide to promote those who work closely with them. The current situation is forcing civil society organizations not only to think about their safety, but also about new ways of continuing their work towards their mission. They also have to reshape their fundraising strategies immediately to be able to sustain their work. These organizations are very close to their mission and the mission is a priority for them not to go on financially or to develop big activities but to trust their mission. The big change is that these organizations started thinking about fundraising from individual people. This is what has changed in our approach in the last few years and we encourage them to use these donations not only for the future but also to think about the future, to think about creating a framework of their own independent funding independent of public institutions. And of course many of these organizations are doing well with this. Part of it is the economic activity. Part of it is the payment activity but for most of them the most important direction is the return of individual donations. We are very proud to still have our international donors supporting us and I would make it very clear that without this help, this support we wouldn't have made it for the last four years. But I'm aware that there are organizations in Poland, smaller organizations who cannot say the same. Civil society organizations in Europe still hope that the European Union can provide some sort of protection against their own authoritarian governments. There is discussion about making European Union funding dependent on respecting the rule of law and other European core values but also on the European Union spending money on protecting these values within its border, not just outside of its border. After 25 years of struggle for human rights protection you might have thought that you achieved certain level and you secured the basis and you can build on that but in 2015 we discovered that there is no such a thing as secured basic understanding of the importance of the rule of law and democratic values and it was for many people in the foundation especially those who remember in the communist period that was like a sort of deja vu that we, how many times do we have to fight for the very same thing. Vlaslav Havel, the great dissident from the Czech Republic once said that a totalitarian system can coexist with private ownership, sometimes even with private enterprise and parliamentarian system but it can never coexist with a vibrant civil society. So vibrant civil society really makes a difference between an authoritarian and a free society.