(Adnkronos) – Hungarian police today questioned activist Géza Buzás-Habel, the main organizer of the Pride parade in the university city of Pécs, an event held in early October with the participation of thousands of people despite being banned by authorities under Hungary’s new child protection law. “I was registered. Of course, I made a statement, admitting that yes, I organized Pride and invited people to participate,” he said in a video published by the local news site Szabad Pécs. “I stated that I do not feel guilty. I exercised a fundamental right enshrined in various international and European human rights conventions. That’s all,” he added in front of dozens of protesters who came to support him.
For years, Pride events and the rights of the LGBTQ+ community in general have been targeted by the government led by Viktor Orbán in the name of child protection. This year, his governing coalition approved legislative changes aimed at preventing marches. However, over 200,000 people participated in the annual Budapest Pride in June, defying the police ban, and thousands similarly participated in the Pécs Parade, the only parade outside the capital. The organizers of this latter event sought to circumvent the ban by notifying the police of a different, simultaneous demonstration against “wild animal overpopulation” and the incidents they cause, along the same route later followed by the parade.
If indicted and convicted, Buzás-Habel faces up to one year in prison for organizing and encouraging participation in a banned demonstration. The government denied that this year’s Pécs Pride actually took place, claiming that participants, who chanted slogans for LGBTQ+ rights and waved rainbow flags, were actually present to protest against wild animals. “I believe that those who marched did so in the second event,” Orbán’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyás, said earlier this month during a government press conference. In August, Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony was also questioned about the capital’s parade.
