✖ Extreme Right Attack Against Budapest Pride

A small group of people wearing extremist symbols assaulted several participants of the 15th Budapest Pride festival. The police arrived at the site in considerable force; however, their procedure was objectionable in several respects. Organisers of Budapest Pride are requesting both the police and ordinary citizens to stand up for the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.

Last night at around 7 pm, following the opening ceremony of the 15th Budapest Pride Film and Cultural Festival, a dozen neo-Nazis appeared outside the Művész Cinema, which hosts the film festival. They spent a long time shouting verbal abuse, and tried to tear the rainbow flag down from the cinema wall. The police officers posted outside the cinema managed to prevent this, however, in a side street not visible from the cinema, two teenagers of the neo-Nazi group hit one of the participants of the Festival, who was leaving the area.

Riot police appeared in large numbers, but they surrounded the victim and demanded that he identify himself, while the perpetrators walked away from the scene. It is only because Festival participants started to shout and point at the perpetrators that the police intercepted their escape.

Several organisers of Budapest Pride heard one police officer using impermissible language, saying that the Festival was provoking the extreme right group with our flag, and that: “I’m not calling anyone [for assistance], they should take their faggot flag down” – he said to another police officer, using the most derogatory term in Hungarian, which denotes rape victims in prisons.

“Police intervention in crimes against a community should be neither intimidating for the victims, nor should it further the misconception in the protected community that we are responsible for the atrocities we suffer,” said Sándor Steigler, president of the board of Budapest Pride. “We want to support the police in uprooting homophobia among their ranks as has happened in several European countries, so that they can unambiguously stand up for the idea that only the perpetrators are responsible for violence against LGBT people.”

The police released the perpetrators after checking their documents. “The police should have taken the perpetrators into custody, as it was feared that they would commit further criminal acts,” said Gábor Kuszing of Patent Association, who was there at Művész Cinema. “The police should have checked the documents of all of the extremists gathering there; this perhaps could have prevented the whole attack. More determined action is needed to prevent such violence, which was really foreseeable.”

What is more, it is possible that someone of the same group hit a gay-looking tourist only ten metres from the cinema, just a few hours later. As the foreigner did not speak Hungarian he did not understand what the shaved man was telling him and what he intended.

According to organisers of the Budapest Pride those respecting democracy, whether heterosexual or LGBT, can act against the violence by standing up for LGBT rights and participating at the Festival and the Gay Pride March starting from Hősök tere at 15:00 on Saturday 10 July.