Participants in the Pride march cross the Elisabeth Bridge in Budapest, Hungary, on Saturday.
Rudolf Karancsi/AP
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Rudolf Karancsi/AP
BUDAPEST, Hungary — Around 100,000 people defied a government ban and police orders on Saturday to march in what organizers called the largest LGBTQ+ Pride event in Hungary’s history in an open rebuke of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government.
Marchers gambled with potential police intervention and heavy fines to participate in the 30th annual Budapest Pride, which was outlawed by a law passed in March by Orbán’s right-wing populist governing party.
The march began at Budapest City hall and wound through the city center before crossing the capital’s Erzsébet Bridge over the Danube River. Police diverted the crowd from its planned route to keep it separated from a small group of far-right counterprotesters, while members of Hungary’s LGBTQ+ community and large numbers of supporters danced to music and waved rainbow and anti-government flags.
The massive size of the march, which the government for months had insisted would no longer be permitted in Hungary, was seen as a major blow to Orbán’s prestige, as the European Union’s longest-serving leader’s popularity slumps in the polls where a new opposition force has taken the lead.
Some participants said that the march wasn’t only about defending the fundamental rights of sexual minorities, but also addressed what they see as an accelerating crackdown on democratic processes under Orbán’s rule.
Orbán and his party have…