After five weeks of organizing weekly Tuesday protests on Budapest’s Elisabeth Bridge to oppose the government’s attacks on civil liberties – including the new law banning the June 28 Pride march in the Hungarian capital – Akos Hadhazy did not expect another blow against the right to assemble. On the morning of April 22, the opposition MP discovered that the protest scheduled for a few hours later, as well as the May 1st demonstration the following week, had been banned by Hungary’s Supreme Court. According to the country’s highest judicial authority, these events constitute “obstacles” to the smooth running of the city’s “daily life.”
“Just like under the Soviet regime, political events are banned for political reasons,” sighed the unaffiliated representative for Zuglo, Budapest’s 14th district, wearing jeans and a dark blazer amid empty tables in the back room of a downtown café. Although he was tired, he reassured himself by thinking this latest obstacle only proved the ruling party was “disturbed” by his weekly acts of civil disobedience, he insisted. “I will keep going.”
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