| schema:articleBody
| - A six-week occupation by students of Hungary's top arts university opposing a government reform continued Friday after the protestors defied a deadline to leave the building. The overhaul at the 155-year-old university is seen by critics of nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban as the latest step in his attempt to reshape Hungary's public life to fit his own nationalist and culturally conservative agenda. New government-appointed leaders at the University of Theatre and Film Arts (SZFE) in downtown Budapest said in a letter published in Hungarian media that the students must leave by 6 pm (1600 GMT) on Friday so that the building can be disinfected and maintenance carried out. "The students are guarding the building room by room," a student spokesman told a crowd of around 1,000 sympathisers who gathered outside on the street late-Friday. "We have strengthened the blockade, and will keep it up until the (university's) autonomy is guaranteed," he said. Student representatives said later that they had prevented attempts by some university staff to empty some of the occupied rooms of their belongings. The students began the blockade on September 1, a day after Fife's former management resigned in protest at the imposition of a government-picked board whose trustees are appointed indefinitely. Last week the new board's Chancellor, Gabor Szarka, a former army colonel, was prevented from entering the building by rows of students blocking the entrance. The blockade was called "internal anarchy" by Szarka Thursday, who said that he had personally switched off the internet at the building, and changed door locks inside to prevent the students misusing the property. The new board insists that the changes -- including a switch of the university's ownership from state to private hands -- will improve both infrastructure and educational standards. But the hundreds of students taking part in the protest, and many of the university's teachers who have also gone on strike, say the reform was aggressively pushed through and strips the institution of its autonomy. A solidarity rally will be held in Budapest on October 23rd, the anniversary of Hungary's anti-Soviet uprising in 1956, the students said earlier this week. The self-styled "illiberal" premier Orban, 57, declared in 2018 that "big changes" were afoot for Hungary's cultural and academic scenes, considered in pro-government circles as hotbeds of liberalism. Since then, laws have reformed how theatres are controlled and removed autonomy from the leadership of the prestigious Hungarian Academy of Sciences. pmu/jsk/pma/lc
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)