“Budapest Pride Was a Clear Protest Against Orban”: What Was the March Like in Hungary’s Capital Despite the Ban?
On Saturday, Budapest, the capital of Hungary, hosted Pride, where nearly 200,000 people marched according to the organizers — despite the ban by nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
In addition to the law passed in mid-March banning such gatherings, Hungary went so far as to amend its Constitution to “protect children” from LGBTQ.
“It’s hard to estimate the exact number because there have never been this many people at Budapest Pride,” said Pride President Viktoria Radvanyi to AFP, while Budapest Mayor from the Green Party Gergely Karácsony praised the record attendance.
“Thank you, Viktor Orban, for promoting a more tolerant society!” he wrote on Facebook.
The police, citing “child protection,” banned the event last week, marking a setback for LGBT+ rights in the European Union (EU).
However, the organizers and the mayor’s office decided to go ahead with the parade, claiming such an event does not require official approval.
After support was expressed from 33 countries for the gathering in Budapest, the justice minister warned diplomats in Hungary that if they participate in the banned event, they would “have to face consequences.”
Cameras were pre-installed in Budapest to enable facial recognition so authorities could fine participants up to 500 euros, while organizing or inviting participation could lead to one year in prison.
Goran Miletic, director of Civil Rights Defenders for Europe, attended the Pride March in Budapest. He told Danas that this year’s Pride in Budapest was clearly the most important one in Europe.
He added that Orban himself contributed to this by reacting not with compromise but with increased repression, after initially weak responses to the ban. In the end, the solidarity with the organizers, both within Hungary and across Europe, was unexpectedly large,” said Miletic.
According to him, every major Pride in Europe, political groups, and institutions sent delegations, and nearly everyone made supportive statements or came in person to support the march.
“There were definitely more than 100,000 people in the streets (some say even 200,000), which no one expected. There were many older citizens of Budapest. The atmosphere was joyful and musical, even though the Pride was clearly a protest against Orban’s rule and laws,” Miletic noted.
He stated that the true star was the mayor, who after the ban declared the entire event a city gathering, opened the Pride Park on public grounds, and thus helped circumvent the ban.
“The atmosphere in Budapest was excellent, small right-wing groups looked rather ridiculous, especially since the police had to protect them. All in all, a very important day for the LGBT community in all homophobic countries in Europe — and certainly for Serbia, and a major own goal by Orban,” Miletic concluded.
Before Orban returned to power in 2010, Hungary was one of the strongest defenders of LGBT+ rights in the region: homosexuality was decriminalized in the early 1960s, and same-sex civil unions were recognized in 1996. But as prime minister, this advocate of “illiberalism” gradually reversed that progress.
