PHOTOS: Protest in Budapest downtown showed determination and resilience towards the Orbán cabinet

Those regularly attending the weekly demonstrations “are showing determination and resilience, the only things besides force that the powers that be are afraid of,” independent lawmaker Ákos Hadházy said in downtown Budapest on Tuesday.

Budapest Pride: we must be there on Saturday, says Hadházy

Hadházy spoke at the 15th demonstration demanding the withdrawal of the law on the right to free assembly and against the adoption of the transparency bill. He said that while “the cause we have been demonstrating for week after week seems to be lost”, there were people who could not accept that; “sooner or later, the people’s opinion will change.” “I can see that this cause seems lost right now, but we must continue, we can’t do anything else,” he said.

Regarding the Pride march, he said “of course, we must be there on Saturday, because this is not only about the rights of gay people but of our own.” He said police action regarding the event “was quite despicable”.

Letter to the Ukrainian people

Musician János Gerzson read an open letter called Letter to the Ukrainian people, published by some 50 public figures and signed by some 30,000 people. “Faced with the increasingly shameful anti-Ukraine propaganda of the Orban government,” the signatories expressed their solidarity with the Ukrainian people, and their respect for the soldiers of the Ukrainian army “standing their ground heroically, protecting their country.” Gerzson noted that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had also commented on the letter on social media, and thanked him for the “negotiations-ready tone — even if it came a little late.”

At the end of the demonstration, Hadházy asked protesters to walk to the Corvin alley, to the plaque of Sándor Kopácsi, the chief of the Budapest police during the anti-Communist uprising in 1956, who stopped police from shooting into the crowd. The demonstrators marched on one lane of the road between Ferenciek Square and Corvin alley; many laid flowers at the plaque.

Read also:

• Budapest on the brink of financial collapse, public transport may halt this summer, but Budapest Pride will be held on Saturday
• PHOTOS: Huge protest in Budapest downtown against Orbán cabinet, MP Hadházy calls for obstructing traffic