Nick Thorpe
BBC Budapest correspondent
Reuters
Budapest promotes its status as a party town. On Saturday, the party flooded the streets and occupied the intense summer heat.
Of the 100,000-200,000 people, mostly young people danced and sang the path from pests to Buda.
Usually, the distance that takes just 20 minutes to walk can last up to three hours.
The ban on Prime Minister Victor Orban, many Budapest Pride participants told me, spurred them to attend events that would leave the normal. Last year, only 35,000 people participated.
Many banners laughed at Hungary’s prime minister. It was like a peaceful revenge by some of the people who declared war during the past 15 years of power.
“In my history lessons, I learned enough to recognize dictatorship. You don’t need to explain it – vik!” Read the handmade banner. Read another: “I’m so bored of fascism.”
T-shirts with bright eyeshadow and lipstick images of Orban were everywhere.
Reuters
PM Viktor Orban decorated t-shirt ock lol, charming images
The brilliant equipment LGBT community formed the core of the march, but this year’s pride has turned into a celebration of human rights and solidarity.
“We don’t look like we’re banned!” Beaming Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony told the crowd in a speech in front of the Budapest Institute of Technology.
Saturday’s march could go down as the best moment of his political career. City Hall is hunger for funds, and has been constantly fighting the central government to host events that the government attempted to ban, and have won for at least for now.
“In fact, we seem peacefully and freely playing a big fat show freely to inflated and hateful forces. The message is clear. They are powerless against us!” Karacsony continued.
Nick Thorpe, BBC
Over generations – all kinds of people have appeared for the march of pride
Among the attendees was Finland’s Mep Lee Anderson, who felt Orban was using a discussion of family values as an excuse to ban marching.
“It’s important to emphasize that pride isn’t the only reason we’re here. It’s about the fundamental rights of all of us,” she said.
The ban is based on a new law, passed by the majority held by the Orban Fides Party of Congress, subordinating Parliamentary freedom to the Child Protection Act of 2021, which equated homosexuality with pedophilia, and thus prohibiting the portrayal or promotion of homosexuality in places where children may see it.
Police justified the ban on Saturday in March because children may see it. In response, the mayor cited the 2001 Act that events organized by the council do not fall under the rights of the council.
Ultimately, the police officers who attended the march remained modest and looked sadly at the party they had been excluded.
In another part of the city, Orban attended graduation ceremonies for 162 new police and customs officials, and new officials for the National Director General for Alien Police.
“Ordinance does not disappear from itself, it must be created because without it, a civilized life will be lost,” Orban told students and their families.
Previously, he and other prominent Fides officials posted photos of themselves along with their children and grandchildren in an attempt to regain the word “pride.”
“Post a photo and show us what we are proud of,” said Alexandra Zentkirari, head of the Fides faction of Budapest Council, on Facebook, along with a photo of herself in a rather simple “Hungarian” t-shirt.
The police presence was detained in Budapest on Saturday, but temporary cameras were installed before March and installed in police vehicles recorded the entire event.
Getty Images
A vast crowd poured over the famous Elizabeth Bridge
The March 18 law that sought to ban pride gave police new authority to use facial recognition software. Participants may be fined between 14 pounds ($19) and 430 pounds.
Government media has raged criticism of the day’s events, reflecting statements made by leading Fides politicians that March is a perversion celebration that has nothing to do with parliamentary freedom.
“The Budapest Pride’s chaos” declared the government’s flagship Magyall Nemzet.
“Infamous climate activist and more recently, terrorist supporter Greta Samberg posted on her Instagram page that she is also in Budapest Pride,” it continued.
“After the demonstration, this will be a question for the court,” Zoltan Kissarily, a political analyst close to the government, told the BBC.
“If the court decides in favour of the mayor and (pride) organizers, Orban can say, now we must change the law again.”
However, if the court decides the government, the Prime Minister can be satisfied with the laws he pushed forward – despite the facts, pride was on the way.
