The organization has expressed concern about a new law banning LGBTQ pride events
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has sounded the alarm over Hungary’s recent law banning pride events, urging the government to repeal it. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has argued that the legislation seeks to protect minors from harmful influences.
On Tuesday, Hungary’s parliament passed a law prohibiting pride events and authorizing the authorities to use facial recognition technology to identify participants and give them fines of $500. The legislation, backed by Orban’s Fidesz party and its junior partner, the Christian Democrats, passed 136-27 under an expedited procedure.
The measure amends the country’s assembly regulations to ban events that violate Hungary’s child protection laws, which prohibit the portrayal of homosexuality to minors. All profits from the fines will also be diverted to child protection policies. The law has sparked protests in Budapest, with opposition lawmakers using smoke bombs in the parliament chamber.
In a statement on Friday, UN Human Rights spokesperson Liz Throssell blasted the new law, stating that the agency is “deeply concerned” about the move, which she said “results in arbitrary and discriminatory restrictions on the rights of LGBTIQ+ individuals to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and privacy.”
She also condemned the surveillance measures, saying they “should be limited to those strictly necessary and proportionate for achieving legitimate objectives and should never be deployed in a discriminatory manner.”
UN Human Rights chief Volker Turk called on the Hungarian authorities to repeal the law and urged them to combat what he called “the high levels of intolerance, discrimination, bullying and harassment related to sexual orientation.”
Orban, who has long been an ardent critic of “woke policies,” has defended the new law, insisting that “the international gender network must take its hands off our children.” He accused the EU authorities and the previous US administration of “pushing their harmful agendas,” but said that after the election of US President Donald Trump, “the winds have shifted in our favor.”
“We finally have the space to act and protect our children. No more re-education, no more compromises. Our children come first, and we will fight to defend their future,” he wrote on X.
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