Staff at Hungary’s largest university stand up for freedom of assembly and LGBTQI people

The ELTE staff statement is published without changes:

Solidarity Statement for freedom of assembly and LGBTQI people

As members of Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), we recently signed the statement below and invite our colleagues to join us in endorsing it.

A recent amendment to the law, passed at the government’s suggestion, and the concomitant proposal to amend the Fundamental Law violates our fundamental liberty and equal dignity. The government’s spurious claim, all too familiar from history, to protect our children sets the stage for the curtailment of the freedom of assembly of arbitrarily designated groups – in the first instance LMBTQI communities – as well as their surveillance and punishment. As university lecturers and researchers, we protest against this curtailment of basic rights. We affirm our commitment, on the basis of academic freedom, to protecting all our colleagues and students from incitement to hatred and ensuring their freedom of expression.

We issue the above statement because a number of our students and colleagues rightly feel stigmatised and threatened by this discriminatory and arbitrary legislation.

ELTE’s mission statement proclaims the values of professionalism, solidarity, humanity, and respect for human dignity and free expression. As faculty members of the Eötvös Loránd University, we accordingly declare that we remain committed to a diverse and inclusive institutional climate. We affirm that it is our responsibility to ensure that LGBTQI students and colleagues shall always feel free to make their voices heard in matters concerning them and the university community at large. There is no scientific basis for the Hungarian government’s claim that child protection concerns justify the ban on the Pride demonstration. This ban significantly restricts freedom of assembly.

It is particularly important to assume this responsibility at a time when our institutions and communities face growing government pressure and similar measures appear in other countries.

We refer to the Hungarian tradition of expressing solidarity in darker times, when for instance a number of Christian writers, artists, and scientists protesting anti-Jewish laws by publishing the following declaration on 5 May 1938 in the daily Pesti Napló: