2006 Protests in Hungary - Monday, October 23, 2006

Monday, October 23, 2006

On the 50th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, clashes between protesters and the police were reported. Mounted police charges, tear gas, rubber bullets, and water cannons were used to force back the crowd. Rubber bullets were frequently aimed head-high, causing a large number of injuries; a man lost the sight of one eye due to a rubber bullet.

Events started at 02:00 AM, when Chief of the Budapest Police Force Péter Gergényi decided - in opposition to previous agreements with demonstrators - to clear out Kossuth Square . The official justification was that the demonstrators "obstructed security checking of the square". (This was not completely true: hundreds of protesters left the square "extemporary" to make it easier for the police. Only a grim group of 10-20 demonstrators led by Ferdinánd "Satu" Lanczer stayed there. They were rounded up by police.) Most of the crowd stopped at Nádor Street. Gergényi declared the area an "operational zone" and prohibited all demonstrations on the square and in its neighborhood "as long as necessary".

Budapest Mayor Gábor Demszky declared he was not informed about these police actions and "at first glance" did not agree with them.

Police say that no one was injured in this action, but MTI (the official Hungarian News Agency) reported "men with bloody heads". The peaceful demonstration ended for a while, with smaller (mainly verbal) incidents between police and protesters noted. The indignant crowd was not willing to end protesting; many of them wanted to go back when the security check was finished, but the police started to crowd them out. When this news spread, the crowd began to multiply.

Near St. Stephen's Basilica people started to muster again in the morning. Some of them made anti-government signs in English and wanted to take part in the official celebration on Kossuth Square with them, but policemen prohibited it. Finally, the crowd began to march into Corvin Street, because there they could hold a minor, preannounced (and therefore "legal") celebration. The crowd grew, so Hír TV (News Television) reported ten thousand protesters according to "non-official police sources." The crowd could not decide what to do. Most of them shouted "Kossuth Square" and "Let's go, let's go," and after the celebration started off. On Alkotmány Street they clashed with police forces, which made them retreat to the Cathedral. At about 15:00, police started to dissipate the crowd with tear gas. Protesters acquired an unarmed T-34 tank (a part of the occasional local open-air exhibition) and used it in a charge. After only a few hundred meters the tank ran out of fuel and its driver (said to be a veteran of 1956) was arrested, no serious damage was done.

At Astoria a peaceful celebration of Fidesz started. Despite their readiness (during the previous few days, hundreds of policemen were called in from the country to the city), police did little to defend the crush of radical anti-government protests that took place only 300–500 metres away and pressed nearer and nearer by police's gas attacks in the wide Erzsébet Boulevard. That night and the next day many political analysts and congressmen brought up the idea that this police behaviour was not by chance. Fidesz celebration, with a participation of thousands, ended at 18:00. That crowd could not be disbanded at all when police started a horse assault on Deák Square protesters. They used gun shells too.

Vandalism was reported on the side of protesters and police alike. Some vandals broke shop windows while many other protesters tried to prevent them. But evidences show that appearance of police was unprecedentedly brutal and disproportionate to the protest. The police shot gas grenades and rubber bullets in at head-height and didn't sort peaceful celebrants from protesters and provocateurs. Many peaceful passers-by were injured. The fact that police suddenly reduced public transport in many places and directly and indirectly detained celebrators from getting to monuments and protesters from escaping from hot places added to the growing chaos. There are lot of videos showing policemen, after tackling a demonstrator, kicking him. A detachment of policemen entered a bar on the Blaha Lujza Square, dragged out several customers on the street and subdued them violently, which included breaking the fingers of a handcuffed man, and shooting one in the back with a shot of rubber pellets point-blank. Policemen in most of the restaurants and pubs drove in guests (referring to safety risks) or drove them out (referring to that they search for radical demonstrators) and they used foul language. They mistreated not only demonstrators, but bypassers, ambulancemen, foreign tourists, and reporters. Even Parliamentarian Máriusz Révész was shot and beaten when he, showing his MP clearance in his hand, tried to protect their celebration from attacking police forces. They ill-treated Jesuit priest László Vértesaljai., as well as two other priests.

The crowd escaped in the direction of the Danube River. In Ferenciek Square and on a bridge over the Danube they built barricades from everything they found (including building operations materials, signposts, iron police cordon elements, cars and buses). The number of injured people grew. With a snow plow, police broke the barricade on the bridge. At dawn riots ended.

128 people were reported injured, 19 of whom were policemen. At least two men were reported blinded in one eye from the rubber bullets.

In the country (e.g. in Szombathely), demonstrations started against "police terror".