TOL Hungary

Budapest’s Mild Autumn

October 28th, 2007 by robertnemeth

Yes, it was a mild autumn, at least compared to last year’s hot one. Not regarding the weather, of course. Many were afraid that last year’s riots will be repeated again - well, they were not. However, they tried it, but there were not enough extremists, and the police is much better than it was a year ago.

On the eve of the national holiday of October 23rd there was a demonstration of the extreme right in front of the headquarters of the public television that was besieged last September. The demonstrators wanted to go to the Opera because the official celebration with the speech of the Prime Minister was there. But, this was banned by the police. Moreover, the surrounding area of the Opera was completely closed, which many held for too much of “security”. The small group (maximum 2-300) of protesters clashed with the policemen in a nearby street for a short while, threw some Molotov-cocktails, beat some journalists, but then they left. 19 people were injured: 14 policemen, 4 journalists and one protester. Some of them were taken to the police, including the organizer. He was released after the quick trial three days later, the others in a few hours.

On the next day, on the 23rd, basically nothing has happened. There were some people shouting on the streets, few were detained in the evening for throwing bottles on the policemen, but that was all, nothing special. It is still worth to mention that one of the rallies of the extremists was full of openly anti-Semite slogans.

The interesting day was the 26th. Days before, one of the extremists website announced that they would close one of the bridges of the city in the morning (the same one that was closed by extreme rightists in July 2002 when they were protesting against the result of the elections). So they did, the police was unable to prevent the few dozen demonstrators to walk in the middle of the bridge and form a blockade. After they were pushed back to the pavement (this time, without tear gas or water-cannon, just with words), a kind of touch last started: they went further, stopped the traffic at the nearby crossing, then the policemen arrived and the protesters went away. Finally, to quote the commander of Hungarian police: they camouflaged themselves as simple passers-by and disappeared. More then 80 people were detained (and released after a few hours), and small groups stayed around the bridge till the evening - forcing policemen to stay there as well.

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