Anti-fascist groups were joined by Roma representatives and NGOs for a demonstration against discrimination, violence and extremism on Saturday.
The event attracted around 5,000 people, the organisers said.
Participants including Helmut Scholz, MEP of the Party of the European Left, stood in front of the central monument in Budapest’s at Heroes’ Square to pay tribute to six Roma who were killed in the series of attacks targeting their community.
Laszlo Teleki, the prime minister’s commissioner in charge of Roma affairs, said that legislation which bans hate speech against minority groups had, unfortunately, not been a cross-party affair. Surprisingly, the amendment to the Penal Code on punishing Holocaust denial by up to three years imprisonment on February 22, spearheaded by the ruling Socialists, had been opposed not only by Fidesz as a whole, but by a Fidesz Roma MP and two other opposition Roma MPs, he said.
The demonstration was organised in protest against a commemoration by Hungarian and German neo-Nazi groups which had been planned to take place today at Heroes’ Square. The neo-Nazi party called off the demonstration at the last minute even though a court had overturned a police ban of the event.
Groups of young skinheads in black uniforms and boots appeared during the event in Heroes’ Square. Police checked their identity cards and asked them to leave.
In another incident, a group of anti-government demonstrators shouted abuse at a participant of the event, who said he was Jewish, but police intervened.
E’gad! Back in the day this would have been considered acceptable behaviour. Good on the police and government for stopping this nonsense. A positive step in the right direction for Hungary.
“Groups of young skinheads in black uniforms and boots appeared during the event in Heroes’ Square. Police checked their identity cards and asked them to leave.”
In the twenty first century I can not belive Neo Nazis and extremists still exist.
The ‘young skinheads in black uniforms and boots’, as the police obviously knew, were sent there by the MSZP kin for the photo opportunity. This is a very tired, very old, very lame trick, once popular in communist East Germany. Yes, you are plum crazy if you genuinely see ‘nazis’ in this; but you probably do not.
The ‘young skinheads in black uniforms and boots’, as the police obviously knew, were sent there by the MSZP kin for the photo opportunity
Elle at March 10, 2010 8:49 PM
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Yes, and every Magyar Garda demo is just full of MSZP-provocateurs dressed up in silly black-and-white uniforms, and the football hooligans that stormed the MTV-building in September 2006, were just a bunch of Agent Provocateurs paid by the Government, because that is what Fidesz Vice President Zoltan Pokorni claimed on national TV at that time
And Jobbik knows that all Fidesz claims must be the Truth and nothing but the Truth
Or at least in 2006
If you say so!
@Elle
“The demonstration was organised in protest against a commemoration by Hungarian and German neo-Nazi groups which had been planned to take place today at Heroes’ Square. The neo-Nazi party called off the demonstration at the last minute even though a court had overturned a police ban of the event.”
I must be crazy if the above is just a figment of my imagination. Elle did the article not say this? Am I crazy or are you? My glasses seem to be ok.
There was an intention by some Hungarians and Germans to jointly commemorate the war dead of both nations. (This is not, I know, how MTI put it.) The group that had planned the commemoration called the event off, presumably because it did not want the event defaced by a rabble of lefties. But MTI ‘saw’ ‘young skinheads in black uniforms and boots’ anyway. I put it to you that MTI itself sent them, for photo effect. The group that had intended to commemorate the war dead would not have been of the cut that ‘young skinheads in black uniforms and boots’ suggests. They would have been Hungarians and Germans suitably formally dressed for a commemoration of this nature.
I commented as I did to remark on your ‘In the twenty first century I can not belive Neo Nazis and extremists still exist’. Now, let me add that you need not believe that neo-Nazis’ still exist. But you had better believe that obscenely authoritarian neo-bolsheviks do. They are the scum who deny people the opportunity to commemorate their war dead.
And by the way, Plumcrazy, you could have seen the neo-bolshie scum in action in 2006, when unarmed Hungarian crowds assembled to protest against the lying, thieving Gyurscány government’s latest outrage.