You can see more photos here.

Gábor Vona, the leader of the opposition Jobbik Movement, who joined the demonstrators in the Evening, was violently removed by the police after being pepper-sprayed. He was then shackled, restrained, removed and arrested; in a truly chilling move entirely unworthy of a European democracy.

The Hungarian police are Europe’s most highly politicized police force whose hierarchy and practices have remained virtually unchanged since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Increasingly numerous examples (since October 2006) bear witness to the fact that their central function within the precincts of the capital is the violent suppression of legitimate democratic opposition. Officers are now so certain of career advancement if they fulfil this overtly political role, that they no longer even pay lip-service to the prevention of the crime wave which has been sweeping the Hungarian countryside.

The Budapest Police, having successfully banned a previously organized demonstration, were confident that they would be able to intimidate the citizenry, by sheer force of enormous riot-gear clad numbers, from the exercising of their civil rights. They were wrong. Hungarian Law categorically permits demonstrations within a 72 hour window of contemporary events, without any form of prior permission from the authorities. Lawyers from the independent Ombudsman’s office (whose observers were present at the demonstration) have stated that “they will be investigating” the police’s behaviour.
 

The subsequent protest, held by a few hundred members of the Hungarian Guard, their supporters and members of Jobbik; was in response to such a contemporary event. Namely, the ruling by the unelected judges of the Budapest Appeals Court on 2nd July, which called for the disbanding of the Hungarian Guard. That this nakedly political ruling contradicts the spirit of Article 62 of the Hungarian Constitution, Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and, Article 20 of the Universal declaration of Human Rights; all of which protect the right to Free Assembly; has been noted by several commentators. The judges’ decision also came in a week when independent surveys (such as that carried out by the Somogyi Hírlap) have shown that 80% of people trust the Guard to keep law and order more than their own national police force.

Having peacefully congregated in Erzsébet Square, the supporters and members of the Hungarian Guard (whose regulations strictly prohibit the carrying of any form of weapon, offensive or otherwise) found themselves surrounded by thousands of armed police, bristling with batons and tear-gas canisters and dressed in full riot gear. The protesters were then instructed to disperse or face the consequences.

Though unbowed in their determination to continue in their completely lawful protest, the demonstrators nevertheless communicated their entirely peaceful intentions, to the armed men that were “kettling” them, in the globally recognized and universally accepted sign of non-violent resistance: by sitting down.

The police responded with a series of callous attacks against the seated demonstrators, in an all too common display of the facial spraying of tear gas at close range and the brutal beating of protestors regardless of age or infirmity. Though defenceless the demonstrators remained defiant and resisted all attempts to beat them into submission; and having failed to prevent the demonstrators from exercising their constitutional civil rights, the police were compelled to forcefully remove and arrest the demonstrators by snatching them individually and dragging them away.

Gábor Vona, the President of Jobbik, had previously arrived at the scene of the demonstration to express solidarity with the demonstrator’s plight, nevertheless, and in a staggering display of contempt for democracy, the police also manhandled, arrested and dragged away the party leader. (as can be seen below) The violent arrest and forcible detention of the leader of a major European opposition party is a sickening development, and without precedent in the 21st Century.

Jobbik, released a statement following the savage attack on the demonstration and the state-sponsored kidnap and deliberately intended intimidation of the leader of a party whose recent European polling came within 2% of the incumbent regime’s: Please click here for the statement.