The biggest demonstrations ever against the amendment of the law on assembly were held in Budapest on Saturday. The Hungarian Two-Tailed Dog Party’s peace march was apparently against diversity and for uniformity, with participants dressed in grey. But the real message was that the government’s policies are exclusionary and harmful.
Participants marched along the route of the peace march behind a banner reading Illiberal Pride, which, when viewed on a map, looked peculiarly like male genitalia. One participant told Euronews why he had come to the event:
“I feel that our rights are being taken away and I think we have to stand up to stop that from happening. Because I have to grow up in this country, I have a little brother, he has to grow up and if I want to have children, I want to raise him here. And I would like them to have rights in the future, and if they decide to do whatever they want with their lives, they can do it.”
The government side protested against the Tisza Party in Buda
Meanwhile, government supporters held a protest in Buda’s Millenáris Park over a speech by Tisza Party MEP Kinga Kollár, which Prime Minister Viktor Orbán compared to Ferenc Gyurcsány’s speech at the Kremlin. Kollár spoke at an EP committee meeting in Brussels about the effectiveness of withholding EU funds in Hungary, while the deterioration of living standards in Hungary strengthens the opposition.
Speakers at the demonstration, government publicists Zsolt Bayer and Bence Apáti, as well as Gergely Gulyás, the minister in charge of the prime ministership, called Kollár’s words “unacceptable”, and similar sentiments were echoed by the demonstration participants. One of them told Euronews:
“This country of ten million people is unbelievable how many uninformed and evil people it carries on its back. And when the two meet, it destroys countries. That’s why we are here now, whatever the party. I came in from the countryside.”
On stage, Zsolt Bayer called the president of the Tisza Party, Péter Magyar, a paid agent of Brussels, and Gergely Gulyás called him a traitor.
