The Prosecutor’s Office of Budapest’s fifth and eight districts has charged Gergely Karacsony, the mayor of Budapest, with “organising and leading a meeting called Budapest Pride despite a police ban” last summer, the office said in statement.
According to the indictment, Karacsony had encouraged his followers on social media to attend the Pride march organised by the municipality on June 28. The metropolitan police had issued a ban for the event on June 19 citing stipulations of the child protection law, and because “another person reserved the location for an event of a different kind” on the given day.
The indictment also said that the mayor did not appeal the police ban and “went on organising the event despite the police ban”. “He published further invitations to participate in the event, and led the march” from in front of the City Hall to the Technical University on the Buda side.
The prosecutors have proposed imposing a fine on the mayor without trial for violating the freedoms of association and assembly, the statement said.
Karacsony said in response on Facebook: “I shall never accept … that my homeland should criminalise standing up to freedom, the expression of opinion, that it should ban the freedom of love, or that anyone should be punishable for believing, thinking or loving differently from the majority.”
He said that the procedure “seems to be the price for standing up for our and others’ freedom, but anyone who thinks they can ban me or my city from doing that … is very, very wrong.”
Karacsony also said that the Prosecutor’s Office wanted to impose a fine on him without a trial “for organising the biggest freedom march of the past decades.”
The main point of the indictment, that he organised the march, was true, he said: “this was what happened … and the fact that hundreds of thousands came … turned that day an unforgettable miracle, a reference point.”
MTI
