PHOTOS: Huge protest in Budapest, demonstrators tried to block Chain Bridge, police intervened
Protesters allied to the opposition who held what was initially a legal demonstration in front of Parliament peeled off and marched towards the Prime Minister’s office in the Castle District on Thursday afternoon, and once they crossed Chain Bridge, police closed it down, citing the obstruction of traffic and the fact that the protesters had not secured permission to march.
Independent MP Ákos Hadházy called the protest against the amendment to the assembly law and asked demonstrators to walk to Margaret Island. Supporters of the Momentum Movement attending the event headed towards Chain Bridge instead. “The bridge was occupied in an illegal assembly,” the Budapest Police Headquarters wrote in a statement.
Here is a video:
Hours before on Kossuth Square
At the seventh such demonstration, Hadházy said at Kossuth Square that their protest was not only against the assembly law but also a bid for freedom and their desire “to live in a democratic … and constitutional country”.
Quoting Hungarian statesman and justice minister Ferenc Deák, he said that “luck and time” could restore the nation’s values unless the people casually abandoned freedom.
“So we’re here to demonstrate that we’re not abandoning our freedom and that we intend to regain it,” he said.
The amendment to the assembly law, he said, was one red line out of the many that the power-holders were crossing.
Hadházy also referred to “a Chinese-type surveillance system” used against opposition figures, adding that he “could not look his children and parents in the eye” if everything were not done to ensure that they did not have to live in a country that employed such measures.
The MP vowed to hold a further police-permitted protest at Ferenciek Square next Tuesday as well as demonstrations at the same place every Tuesday thereafter.
László Majtényi, a lawyer, called the 15th amendment to the Fundamental Law “the most shameful” so far, designed to advance political goals of the ruling Fidesz party. He said it not only destroyed constitutionality but the whole Hungarian legal system, too. The ban on Pride, he added, violated human dignity.
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