Thousands of Hungarians protest against Pride ban law
Thousands of people took to the streets in Budapest on Tuesday night to protest against a recently adopted bill aimed at banning the annual Pride march.
The legislation is the latest in a series of measures under Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government, which critics say curtail the rights of the EU country's LGBTQ community.
The adopted bill aims to ban the Pride march on the basis that it infringes on Hungary's criticised "child protection" law, enabling authorities to fine those who attend or organise such an event, and use facial recognition tools to identify potential offenders.
Waving Hungarian and rainbow flags and holding up signs that read "Enough of the lies" and "Down with Orban! We want democracy", more than 10,000 people gathered in central Budapest according to an AFP photographer.
"We're standing up for the freedom of assembly," said 26-year-old psychologist Emese, who declined to give her surname.
Another protester, 60-year-old pastry chef Agica Tothne, told AFP that she also plans to join the upcoming demonstrations since "this corrupt system needs to fall, and people are starting to wake up".
Independent lawmaker Akos Hadhazy and organiser said the protests "won't stop until the law is repealed", slamming what he called a "techno-fascist law" that was modelled after similar ones in China and Russia.
Dorottya Redai of the Labrisz lesbian organisation spoke at Tuesday's rally, saying that the bill goes beyond restricting the "fundamental right to peaceful assembly".
The gender studies researcher said it is "clearly meant to erase LGBTQ people from public life".
The law against Budapest Pride has already sparked protests in Hungary.
When parliament passed the legislation in mid-March, demonstrators blocked a Budapest bridge for more than three hours.
March organisers have said they plan to go ahead with the 30th Budapest Pride on June 28.
mg-kym/giv
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
10 minutes ago
- Yahoo
S. Korea halts loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts against North
South Korea on Wednesday halted loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts into the nuclear-armed North, the defence ministry said, adding it was a bid to "restore trust" under Seoul's new administration. The decision to suspend the broadcasts was "to make good on a promise to restore trust in South-North Korea relations and seek peace on the Korean peninsula", the defence ministry said in a brief statement. A ministry spokesperson told AFP the broadcasts were halted Wednesday afternoon. Ties between the two Koreas deteriorated under the hardline administration of hawkish ex-president Yoon Suk Yeol. But Yoon was impeached and stripped of office earlier this year over an abortive martial law declaration. After winning last week's snap poll, Seoul's new President Lee Jae-myung pledged to improve ties with Pyongyang. The loudspeakers were turned on in the demilitarised zone that divides the two Koreas in June last year in response to a barrage of trash-filled balloons flown southward by Pyongyang. The North claimed the balloons were a response to activists floating similar missives filled with anti-Kim Jong Un propaganda and US dollar bills northwards. The two Koreas technically remain at war because the 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. The anti-North Korea broadcasts infuriate Pyongyang, which has previously threatened artillery strikes against Seoul's loudspeaker units. South Korea's resumption of its broadcasts last year was the first time the tactic had been used in six years. They typically consist of blaring K-pop songs and news reports into the North. - North Korea response? - In response, North Korea turned on its own propaganda broadcasts, sending strange and unsettling noises into the South at all hours, prompting complaints from border residents. On Ganghwa island, which is very close to the North, villager Ahn Hyo-cheol told AFP that the North Korean noises had "not subsided at all" by Wednesday afternoon. "While I don't have high hopes for how North Korea might change, I think the government's decision to halt loudspeaker broadcasts toward the North is the right move," he said. Ganghwa county councillor Park Heung-yeol told AFP the move by Seoul was "long overdue". "Halting the loudspeaker broadcasts should not be the end -- we must also work to restore inter-Korean communication channels and initiate dialogue to stop the North's broadcasts targeting the South," Park added. Lee, who took office the day after last week's election, has vowed to improve ties with the North through dialogue. "No matter how costly, peace is better than war," he said after he was elected. North Korea has not commented on Lee's election except for a brief news report informing its public of his win. Lee comes to power with his party already holding a parliamentary majority -- secure for the next three years -- meaning he is likely to be able to get his legislative agenda done. The halt to loudspeaker broadcasts "is a clear signal from Lee that he intends to deliver on his campaign promise to improve ties with the North and that he has no hostile intent toward it," said Hong Min, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification. "We can expect Lee to take further steps to further this stance, such as attempting to revive a military agreement with the North that was scrapped last year," Hong said. "The North could reciprocate by halting its own noise campaign targeting South Koreans living on border-area islands." kjk-cdl/ceb/dhc
CNN
an hour ago
- CNN
Why these trans elders say they ‘aren't afraid' amid attacks on trans rights
When Renata Ramos was 5, she stood in front of a mirror, squeezed her eyes shut, and prayed that when she opened them, she would see a girl looking back at her. 'I'd go to the mirror, I'd look, and I was still a little boy,' she said. Ramos, 64, says she has been transgender for as long as she can remember. She didn't begin living openly as a woman until her 50s, suppressing her identity because she feared she'd lose her career as a model and actor. When she finally came out, it felt 'like walking on clouds,' she said. For Pride Month, CNN spoke with Ramos and other trans people over the age of 60 about their lives and what they've learned from watching the decades-long battle for trans rights unfold. Many spoke with pride and wonder about the strides the trans rights movement has made in the 21st century, with access to gender-affirming health care more accessible than ever and trans people protected from discrimination by laws in several states. But they also spoke about the anxiety and dismay provoked by the flurry of executive orders from President Donald Trump that target trans people – including declaring that there are only two genders, banning transgender women from participating in most women's sports, and barring transgender recruits from the military. The orders make good on Trump's campaign promise to crack down on 'gender ideology' and build on a wave of anti-trans laws passed largely in Republican states over the past few years. After decades of progress to protect trans rights, the current moment feels like a step back, some said. Still, the older trans people with whom CNN spoke emphasized their resilience in the face of anti-trans legislation – a resilience that has persisted throughout years of trans activism. 'No one can erase our identities,' Pauline Park, a trans activist and organizer, said. 'They can certainly try to take away our rights and undermine our ability to live openly and freely. And we need to resist that, and challenge that. 'But they can't erase our identities.' For Ramos, the latest attack on trans rights is just one more fight in a series of battles the LGBTQ community has fought in the past decades – and won. 'I don't give a damn' about the latest executive orders, she said. 'We've been overcoming one battle after the other all our lives.' The model and actress lived through the height of the AIDS crisis. After rallying for government action in Washington, DC, and attending countless friends' funerals, she saw the disease go from a death sentence to a survivable condition. And she witnessed same-sex marriage go from a dream to a mundane reality across the US. 'These young people are not used to it, which I completely understand,' she added. 'But we, from the old school, we're not afraid.' Ramos was born in Soca, a small and conservative city in Uruguay, where even coming out as gay 'scandalized' people, she said. She immigrated to Rhode Island alongside her family when she was 7. Although she was certain of her transgender identity from childhood, she thought she would never succeed as an actor if she came out. Most trans women she knew in her youth were pushed into sex work due to the lack of work opportunities for trans people, she said. Instead, she lived publicly as a gay man for decades, fantasizing about the day she would be able to retire and live as her true self. She worked as a Spanish-language interpreter while also racking up acting credits: She appeared as a 'drape' in 'Cry-Baby,' the 1990 film by iconic queer director John Waters. She finally began taking steps to medically and socially transition at 56, after a winding career that included stints in Washington, DC, Arizona, Miami, and New York, as well as an extended period of chronic illness followed by a stroke in 2014. Transitioning 'gave me comfort in my own skin,' she said. 'It's so beautiful.' She added that despite the current setbacks, acceptance of transgender people has increased significantly in the past years. It's only 'in the past decades, that you could be transgender and admit it,' she said. She emphasized the diversity of the trans community, despite stereotypes like those that link trans women to sex work. 'They only see one side of the transgender community,' she said. 'But there are many of us that have lived our dreams that are out there.' Criss Smith's gender journey starts in the sweltering heat of Jamaica – with a group of rambunctious boys and Go-Karts. Smith was seven years old, playing Go-Karts with his brother and friends. The other children – all boys – took off their shirts in the heat. But when Smith did the same, he was rebuked. His brother said, ''You're a girl child,'' Smith recalled. 'Oh my God, it was like he stabbed me in the heart.' 'I cried for two days because I did not want to be a girl child,' he said. It wasn't until Smith moved to the US and attended college at Skidmore in upstate New York that he met other queer people and came out as a lesbian, finding confidence in a masculine self-presentation. But even though he was part of a burgeoning queer community, his identity was still fraught by the aftereffects of his conservative, religious upbringing: 'I was so worried that the first time I had sex, I actually thought that God was going to strike me down,' he said. When he came out to his mother, she stopped speaking to him for a year. 'It was heartbreaking,' he said. Smith can still remember the first time he met an out trans person, a bartender in New York who was pursuing top surgery (a gender-affirming mastectomy) in California in the 80s – at a time when the gay rights movement was nascent and transgender rights were on the extreme periphery. He was 'blown away' by how the bartender 'was living so freely, and being so expressive,' he said. His own transition – which started when he was 52 after deep soul-searching and years of 'feeling like he was wearing a mask' – gave him the same sense of freedom. 'I felt like I was reborn,' he said. 'For the first time in my life, I felt like I was being truly me.' It's the same freedom that he hopes can be a lesson from trans people for the rest of the world, even as trans people face 'horrible' attacks on their freedoms and rights. 'Trans people teach the rest of society that freedom is real – because we live freedom every day,' he said. 'We live authenticity every day.' Being trans has been the ultimate expression of self-love, he added. 'That's our superpower, is that we love ourselves so much that we're able to make a choice that is for us only,' he said. 'That's the highest form of self-love.' For Pauline Park, attacks on transgender and queer identity are more than just repressive. They also directly contradict a long and rich history of gender variance across the world. 'There have been people like us since the dawn of history,' she told CNN. She pointed to transgender traditions like the hijra community in South Asia and kathoey in Thailand, as well as Guanyin, a figure in Buddhist mythology who is often represented as genderless or as shifting from male to female. 'It's important to recognize that, in the larger span of history, we have existed, and we will continue to exist,' she said. Park's own coming out went hand-in-hand with her work advocating for LGBT rights. Like Ramos and Smith, Park had long known she was trans – but adopted from South Korea into a 'Christian, fundamentalist household' when she was less than a year old, she 'knew instinctively' that her gender identity wasn't something she could discuss with her parents. Even same-sex marriage was 'inconceivable' when she grew up, she said. A career pivot to LGBT activism brought her to lead the campaign for a transgender rights bill in New York City, and she came out and began living as a woman full-time shortly after. 'Actualizing my transgender identity has been instrumental in my ability to bring about social change,' she said. Park cofounded the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy and has helped advocate for trans rights across the state. Park has led hundreds of transgender sensitivity trainings, she said, where one of the main goals is to help participants 'realize that when you're talking about transgender, you're actually talking about everyone,' she said. 'Not that everyone is trans, but the issues that transgender people face are issues that are rooted in structural oppressions,' she explained. 'We have to think about society as a whole – and whether we want to make it welcoming and inclusive or not.' That work is particularly important right now, when 'the community is now under unprecedented attack, from the highest leadership in the land,' according to Park. She called transphobia 'one of the last generally acceptable prejudices in our society.' She added that anti-trans legislation will have the most devastating impacts on trans youth. Restrictions on gender-affirming care, she said, won't stop trans youth from pursuing that care – but they might mean that they turn to black market solutions instead of gender-affirming therapy overseen by a doctor. 'People will actualize their identities if they want to, even in the face of legal and structural impediments,' she said. 'The effort to try to eliminate gender-affirming care is going to fail, but it's going to harm a lot of people,' she said. 'It's ultimately both futile and morally reprehensible – and it won't work.' For Justin Vivian Bond, the Trump administration's attacks on nonbinary identity reflect 'willful ignorance' more than anything else. The 62-year-old cabaret performer and actor grew up in the 60s and 70s, when even same-sex marriage seemed a far-off dream. As a child, they were terrified to come out to their family. Today, they're a trailblazer in nonbinary representation and something of an institution in New York City's music and theater scene. 'Some people are so resistant to anything that they don't know that they'll never know me – because they're just too ignorant,' they said. The concept of trans or nonbinary identities might be new to some people, they noted. But 'constant change, constant evolution, is part of being alive,' they went on. 'Otherwise you might as well just, you know, hang up your hat and go home and never leave again — or, in other words, drop dead.' A Maryland native, Bond's own career is a testament to the evolution of queer art and culture. They started their career in San Francisco, performing in trans playwright Kate Bornstein's 'Hidden: A Gender' before developing the legendary character of Kiki, 'a 60-some-year-old alcoholic lounge singer with ex-husbands and children,' one half of the 'Kiki and Herb' cabaret duo in which Bond performed in drag. The over-the-top, enraged character was forged at the height of the AIDS epidemic, through a palpable sense of anger from 'the knowledge that the people in power literally wanted us dead.' Since then, Bond has built a flourishing career as a solo artist, maintaining a years-long residency at Joe's Pub at The Public Theater in NYC and receiving a 2024 MacArthur 'genius grant' for crafting 'performances that center queer joy.' Bond's gender, like their artistic practice, is 'constantly evolving,' they said. After decades playing with gender and performance in their on-stage work and life, they started taking hormone replacement therapy in their 50s. 'Still to this day, I don't like being trapped into any identity, because it's just not something that is fixed,' they explained. Bond's own response to the newest waves of attacks by the Trump administration was one of exasperation and frustration: 'Why do we have to go through this?' But the queer community has survived worse, they said. 'All of our rights were fought for,' they said. 'We've always had ways of working around these patriarchal nimrods, and living our lives and being happy and enjoying each other's company and dancing together and partying together and living together and sleeping together and cooking together.' 'That's not going to stop just because they say we should be unhappy.' Dawn Melody realized that she might be trans later in life – after her son came out first. In 2012, her 12-year-old told her he was transgender. Melody, trusting her children to 'tell [her] who they are,' quickly affirmed his identity, supporting him as he cut his hair and came out to friends and family. 'Watching that young person go on to bravely be who they are' was 'inspiring,' she said. And a few years later, it inspired her own soul-searching. Melody had long harbored an ineffable feeling that 'something was different.' But growing up in an Irish Catholic household in Westchester, New York, being queer was off the table – and 'the idea of transgender, that was like being from another planet,' she told CNN. In her 50s, Melody, still searching for the source of that constant feeling of 'difference,' sought out women's clothes and a wig to test-drive presenting as a woman at home. That first trial felt 'miraculous,' she said. Melody said that she had ultimately been inspired by her son's 'steadfast' commitment to his identity. 'This is me taking the cue from my child that that if you're brave enough to do this, so am I,' she said. When Trump first began signing anti-trans legislation in January, she felt 'nausea.' 'He declared it during his inauguration speech that I don't exist,' she said. 'That I'm undesirable.' Melody framed the executive orders as 'frantically trying to sweep back the sea when the sea can't be swept back.' But 'there's no way to stop progress,' she said. And despite the attacks, being trans is 'the best thing that ever happened to me,' she added. 'I'm glad that I am this way, and I wouldn't change it for all the tea in China,' she said. Living as a woman feels like 'swimming with the current' after decades of fighting to swim across it, she said. She added that she hopes trans youth today can keep faith in themselves despite a wave of anti-trans sentiment and legislation. 'It's not without its moments of horror and fear, but life is such a gift – and it's way too short.'
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Lammy in Gibraltar ahead of further talks with EU
Foreign Secretary David Lammy is in Gibraltar ahead of further talks on a potential post-Brexit deal. Talks on rules governing the border of Spain and Gibraltar have been ongoing since Britain left the European Union in 2020, but an agreement has not yet been reached. Mr Lammy is in Gibraltar on Wednesday for talks with chief minister Fabian Picardo. Today, with @DavidLammy and @SDoughtyMP we held a Cabinet meeting in No6 Convent Place to agree final parameters for negotiation. We will now travel to Brussels to meet @MarosSefcovic and @jmalbares. It's time to try to finalise arrangements for lasting, stable relationship… — Fabian Picardo (@FabianPicardo) June 11, 2025 He will then head to Brussels for further discussions with European counterparts on an agreement over the overseas territory. In a post on X on Wednesday morning, Mr Picardo said it is 'time to try to finalise arrangements for lasting, stable relationship between Gibraltar and the EU/Spain which is safe, secure and beneficial'. He also shared images of his meeting with Mr Lammy and foreign office minister Stephen Doughty. Gibraltar was ceded to the UK by Spain in 1713 and the population is heavily in favour of remaining a British overseas territory. The last time it voted on a proposal to share sovereignty with Spain, in 2002, almost 99% of Gibraltarians rejected the move. Gibraltar also hosts an RAF base at its airport. The Government, in line with its Conservative predecessors, has said it will not sign up to a deal that gives sovereignty over Gibraltar to another country, or that the Gibraltarian government is not content with. The strategic defence review, released earlier this month, said the UK would maintain a military presence in Gibraltar, 'upholding the sovereignty of British Gibraltar territorial waters'.
