Wildly successful Budapest Pride March 2013 attended by U.S.’s Stuart Milk

Budapest Pride 2013: Rise up for diversity and human rights

By Cathy Kristofferson, July 06, 2013

Today Budapest celebrated its 18th annual Gay Pride Parade. The Budapest Pride Film & Cultural Festival 2013 has been held on the first Saturday of July every year since 1997.  This year’s seems to be wildly successful as HVG.HU reported:

“The Andrássy Avenue, about eight thousand people marched in LMBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) people jogegyenlőségéért. This is the biggest Budapest Pride.”

Twice as many participated this year as in last year’s and in attendance was a U.S. representation through the presence of  Stuart Milk – Harvey’s nephew – who marched along in support of Budapest’s LGBT community.

Reports also noted that the few dozen protesters who showed up were cordoned off by police, while their chants were completely drowned out by the music of the marchers.

Previous Pride Parades in Budapest have been marred by violence.  Warnings had gone up this year once it was learned that a far right party would once again be holding a rally nearby.

The Harvey Milk Foundation issued the following on their Facebook wall:

“The far-right party Jobbik in Hungary has announced it will hold a large rally Saturday to coincide with the annual Gay Pride Parade. New Hungarian Guard, the latest incarnation of Jobbik’s militaristic uniformed wing will give speeches. In recent years the parade has been conducted behind metal barriers with a heavy police security presence after attacks on Gay Pride participants and violent scuffles between police and skinheads.”

The Christian Democrat Party released a statement asking the pride participants not to provoke protestors by being demonstrative, touting their so called “christian values” and keeping their displays and sexuality to the privacy of the bedroom.

The Socialist Party released a supportive statement saying that “Hungary can only be successful if citizens are free to live without fear“.  And the Budapest Times noted that the “British Embassy has once again lent its support to the Gay Pride event, as one of 17 embassies – among them most of Western Europe, the US and Israel – that signed a statement in support of gay and lesbian rights.”

In the end 19 embassies – Australia, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, UK and US – released a statement of support for the Pride event.

The Budapest Times also noted “The police have not banned the event as they did last year in a move that was eventually overturned by the courts” so perhaps things are evolving in Hungary.

Stuart Milk gave an interview to the Hungarian newspaper Index stressing the importance of Pride and acceptance.

Twittering tourists suggested that there was a media blackout and people were cleared along the parade route.

But some sites provided live cams attached to parade vehicles

and Twitter and Facebook provided plenty of ‘media’!

Tumblr photo galleries  here and here

#BudapestPride