If you are a tourist now in Budapest you can observe the beautiful architecture, historical places, tasty cuisine and the everyday protests against the government.
During the 7 years of the Orbán regime, there were not any strong protesting waves, until now. Every day groups are popping up across Budapest demanding Orbán to resign, and every 2-3 days masses gather to protest against the new undemocratic laws which are proposed by the Fidesz majority Parliament.
The two biggest protests happened within just one week.
The first major protest happened on Sunday, 09.04. It started as a protest against the so called “Lex CEU“ and ended up with the masses going to the Fidesz head office. People wanted to send a clear and simple message to János Áder, President of the Republic, to not sign the new “anti-CEU“ law. This law was made to stop the function of the Gorge Soros funded Central European University in Hungary. The university was a problem for the government for a while, since this university is not under state control and Fidesz wants to centralise education for propaganda purposes. Young people knew this, and did not want to give such an easy victory to Fidesz. They started organising and from small protests it became a massive over 80.000 participant protest.
A democratic country can not ignore such masses, but much to people’s disappointment the president signed the law proposal. This action was oil on fire and the organisers promised there will be a continuation, which actually did just couple of days after.
The second major protest happened on Wednesday 12.04 at Heroes’ Square where ten thousands attended. This time it started as a protest against another antidemocratic law, which is against NGOs in Hungary. The government wants to mark NGOs which receive more than 7.2 Mil Forint (about 24000€) abroad. The government’s official position is, that such NGOs serve foreign interests and threat national security – same or similar reasons like in Russia, where Putin wages war against NGOs. This new law would put huge amount of pressure, unnecessary administration and a stigma on human rights and corruption monitoring organisations. People protested about the law, but in the air you could feel, that it is not about one or two laws it is about the regime. People had enough. Later the evening the protest spread to many parts of the city blockading traffic across the city.
Drone records about the protests:
09.04. Sunday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wY67vNrGEi8&feature=youtu.be
12.04. Wednesday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqUxaP34LuY
(Source: Dronmedia/YouTube)
Why is this time the protests more stronger and dedicated? Because the driving force of these protests are the youth. Young people are demanding a country where there is future with normal wages, a strong civil society, democracy and an independent education system from the government.
The youth does not want to stop now. They feel they are strong, when they are united and that the Hungarian society stands with them. They already announced another huge protest for Saturday, 15.04. They do not want to stop until the Orbán regime resigns.