Tens of thousands of protesters marched through Hungary’s capital on Saturday as a banned 2SLGBTQ+ rights rally swelled into a mass demonstration against the government.
Crowds filled a square near Budapest’s city hall before setting off across the city, some waving rainbow flags, others carrying signs mocking Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
“This is about much more, not just about homosexuality…. This is the last moment to stand up for our rights,” Eszter Rein Bodi, one of the marchers, said.
“None of us are free until everyone is free,” one sign read.
Small groups of counter-protesters attempted to disrupt the parade, but police kept them away and diverted the route of the march to avoid clashes.
Orban’s nationalist government has gradually curtailed the rights of the 2SLGBTQ+ community in the past decade, and its lawmakers passed a law in March that allows for the ban of Pride marches, citing the need to protect children.
Opponents see the move as part of a wider crackdown on democratic freedoms ahead of a national election next year when Orban will face a strong opposition challenger.
Organizers said participants arrived from 30 countries, including 70 members of the European Parliament.
More than 30 embassies have expressed support for the march and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called on Hungarian authorities to let the parade go ahead.
Seventy Hungarian civil society groups, including the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, Transparency International Hungary and the Hungarian Helsinki Commission, published an open letter on Friday in support of the march, saying the law that led to the police ban “serves to intimidate the entire society.”
Mayor backs march
“The right to assembly is a basic human right, and I don’t think it should be banned. Just because someone does not like the reason why you go to the street, or they do not agree with it, you still have the right to do so,” Krisztina Aranyi, another marcher, said.
Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony tried to circumvent the law by organizing the march as a municipal event, which he said does not need a permit. Police, however, banned the event, arguing that it fell under the scope of the child protection law.
Orban, whose government promotes a Christian-conservative agenda, provided some clues on Friday about what participants can expect when he warned of “legal consequences” for organizing and attending the march.
Earlier this week, Justice Minister Bence Tuzson warned in a letter sent to some foreign embassies in Budapest that organizing a prohibited event is punishable by one year in jail, while attending counts as a misdemeanour.
The law that allows for the ban of Pride lets police impose fines and use facial recognition cameras to identify people who attend. When asked about the threat of a one-year jail term, Karacsony said at a media briefing on Friday that such a sentence would only boost his popularity.
“But I cannot take it seriously,” he said.
Making the march a key topic of political discourse has allowed the Orban government to take the initiative back from the opposition and mobilize its voter base, said Zoltan Novak, an analyst at the Centre for Fair Political Analysis think-tank.
“In the past 15 years, Fidesz decided what topics dominated the political world,” he said, noting that this has become more difficult as Orban’s party has faced an increasing challenge from opposition leader Peter Magyar’s Tisza party, which has a 15-point lead over Orban’s Fidesz in a recent poll.
Tisza, which has been avoiding taking a strong position on gay rights issues, did not specify in response to Reuters questions whether it believed the Pride march was lawful, but said those attending deserved the state’s protection.
“Peter Magyar has called on the Hungarian authorities and police to protect the Hungarian people this Saturday, and on other days as well, even if it means standing up against the arbitrariness of power,” the party’s media office said. Magyar himself would not attend.