Orban compares EU support for Pride to ‘Soviet orders’ amid LGBTQ crackdown

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday there would be “legal consequences” for organising or attending a Budapest Pride march in violation of a police ban on the event planned for this weekend.

Hungary’s parliament, in which Orban’s right-wing Fidesz Party has a big majority, passed legislation in March that created a legal basis for police to ban LGBTQ marches, on the grounds that protecting children would supersede the right to assemble. It also lets police use facial recognition cameras to identify people who attend and impose fines.

Critics see the move to ban Pride as part of a wider crackdown on democratic freedoms ahead of a general election next year when Orban will face a strong opposition challenger, seen by some recent opinion polls as pulling ahead.

“We are adults, and I recommend that everyone should decide what they want, keep to the rules … and if they don’t, then they should face the clear legal consequences,” Orban told state radio.

He said police could disperse a banned event but Hungary was a “civilised country” and the task for police was to convince people to follow the law.

“We are in the world not to make each others’ lives more difficult but easier, this is the essence of Christianity,” he said.

Britain, France and Germany and 30 other countries expressed support on Monday for Hungary’s LGBTQ community and the Pride march on June 28, which is to go ahead after Budapest’s liberal mayor said the city would organise the march as a municipal celebration of freedom.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has called on Hungarian authorities to let the Pride parade go ahead – a move which Orban likened in his radio interview to receiving orders from Moscow in communist times.

“Just like Moscow, she regards Hungary as a subordinated country and she thinks she can order Hungarians from Brussels how to live, what to like, what not to like,” Orban said.

Orban’s government promotes a strongly Christian-conservative agenda and has passed several laws affecting the lives of LGBTQ people in the past decade.