A mass protest in Hungary on Sunday drew around 10,000 people in what some demonstrators called an act of resistance against recent actions by the right-wing populist government to restrict basic rights and crack down on independent media, The Independent reports.

The protest, the latest in a recent wave of anti-government demonstrations, came days after a lawmaker from the party of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán submitted a bill that would allow the government to monitor, restrict, penalize and potentially ban media outlets and non-governmental organizations it deems a threat to the country's sovereignty.

The bill, which has been compared to Russia's “foreign agent” law, is expected to pass in the parliament where the ruling Fidesz party holds a two-thirds majority. It is seen by many of Orbán's opponents as among the most repressive policies the long-serving leader has leveled at his critics in the last 15 years of his rule.

Protesters on Sunday filled the square beside Hungary's parliament in central Budapest to denounce the bill, which would allow the government to blacklist organizations that receive any amount of financial support from outside Hungary, and subject them to intrusive monitoring, searches, major fines and possible bans on their activities.

Politicians in Orbán's party, as well as the Sovereignty Protection Office, a controversial government body tasked with identifying alleged threats to Hungary's sovereignty, have specifically identified numerous media outlets and anti-corruption organizations that they claim are serving foreign interests.

From a stage at the protest on Sunday, speaker Jakab Tóth said the bill submitted this week "is nothing more than a threat, a threat against people being able to express their opinions clearly and freely.”

Tóth added he believes the government has a responsibility to protect the sovereignty of citizens to exercise free speech and take part in public life. “If it doesn’t belong to all of us, if not all of us are free, then sovereignty is solely and exclusively the sovereignty of the government,” he said.

Orbán, who polls show faces the most serious challenge yet to his power in elections scheduled for next year, has claimed that foreign interests, primarily originating in the United States and in neighboring Ukraine, have sought to instrumentalize independent media outlets and anti-corruption watchdogs in Hungary to influence public opinion with the aim of toppling his government.