Hungarian PM calls Pride attacks “outrageous” - from Pink News - all the latest gay news from the gay community

Hungarian PM calls Pride attacks "outrageous"

By Tony Grew • July 27, 2007 - 14:11

The Prime Minister said the whole country should join in the debate over gay rights.

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The Prime Minister of Hungary, Ferenc Gyurcsány, has said he utterly condemns people who pelted a gay Pride in Budapest with eggs and attacked revellers.

On Saturday 10th July skinheads and fascists massed along the 7km (4.3 mile) route of the march for gay rights.

They threw eggs and bottles filled with sand at the marchers. Later that evening almost a dozen gay people were set upon and beaten.

Pride organisers accused the police of not doing enough to protect them.

Mr Gyurcsány told TV2 that he regarded the incidents as "brutal, unacceptable, and outrageous."

He said that most Hungarians were in favour of gay rights.

"There are gay people among us, who live the same way as we do and who also want to love freely," he said.

The country joined the European Union in 2004. New laws to legalise same-sex marriage are at the draft stage.

The Prime Minister said he would support the legislation and added that the whole country should join in the debate over gay rights.

During the Pride celebrations earlier this month, socialist politician Gábor Szetey became the first elected political official in Hungary to come out.

He is the second Hungarian politician to come out publicly after Klára Ungár, a member of the liberal party SZDSZ.

Mr Szetey works as a state secretary at the Prime Minister's Office.

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