Anti-fascist groups were joined by Roma representatives and NGOs for a demonstration against discrimination, violence and extremism on Saturday. The event attracted around 5,000 people, the organisers said. Participants including Helmut Scholz, MEP of the Party of the European Left, stood in front of the central monument in Budapest's at Heroes' Square to pay tribute to six Roma who were killed in the series of attacks targeting their community. Laszlo Teleki, the prime minister's commissioner in charge of Roma affairs, said that legislation which bans hate speech against minority groups had, unfortunately, not been a cross-party affair. Surprisingly, the amendment to the Penal Code on punishing Holocaust denial by up to three years imprisonment on February 22, spearheaded by the ruling Socialists, had been opposed not only by Fidesz as a whole, but by a Fidesz Roma MP and two other opposition Roma MPs, he said. The demonstration was organised in protest against a commemoration by Hungarian and German neo-Nazi groups which had been planned to take place today at Heroes' Square. The neo-Nazi party called off the demonstration at the last minute even though a court had overturned a police ban of the event. Groups of young skinheads in black uniforms and boots appeared during the event in Heroes' Square. Police checked their identity cards and asked them to leave. In another incident, a group of anti-government demonstrators shouted abuse at a participant of the event, who said he was Jewish, but police intervened.
politics
