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Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán ‘s main challenger, Péter Magyar, led tens of thousands of demonstrators through the streets of Budapest on Saturday in protest of alleged child abuse in state-run juvenile institutions.
The demonstration came in response to videos published this week depicting employees of a juvenile correction facility in the Hungarian capital, physically abusing children housed there.
The former head of the facility, who is in police custody on suspicion of operating a prostitution ring among other crimes, has also been accused of subjecting minors to physical and sexual abuse.
Police raided the correction centre this week, though critics have accused Orbán’s government of failing to act despite reports of misconduct going back years.
Magyar, whose centre-right Tisza party is polling ahead of Orbán’s Fidesz in most independent polls, has jumped on the case and accused the government of failing to protect vulnerable children, and called on Orbán to resign.
Protesters gathered in cold temperatures in central Budapest and marched solemnly across the Danube River. Many protesters lit torches as dusk fell and began climbing towards Orbán’s offices on Castle Hill
One demonstrator, Sándor Horvát, who travelled some 325 kilometres to the protest from Tiszabecs near the border with Ukraine, said he believed Orbán’s government “will be gone” by the time of elections, set to take place in April next year.
“In other countries, the entire government would have fallen over this scandal. But here we see them clinging to power tooth and nail,” he said.
The abuse of minors in state-run institutions has previously caused a political crisis for Orbán’s government.
In 2024, Hungary’s president, Katalin Novák, and Justice Minister Judit Varga resigned amid public outrage stemming from their endorsements of a pardon for a man convicted of helping cover up cases of child sexual abuse in a public orphanage.
The scandal represented a rare moment of weakness for Orbán, who has led Hungary with near total power since returning to office in 2010.
Magyar, a former insider within Orbán’s Fidesz party, burst into Hungary’s political spotlight as the case unfolded, accusing the government of misconduct and corruption.
Addressing the crowd assembled outside the government’s executive headquarters on Saturday, Magyar drew parallels between last year’s pardon scandal and the more recent child abuse allegations.
“Twenty-two months ago, a country put a question to the Hungarian government: Can it change and improve the situation of children, or will it remain an accomplice of child abusers?”
“Orbán’s government promised everything, but since then, unfortunately, it turned out that every member of the Orbán government took the side of the abusers,” said Magyar.
Orbán’s government has condemned the physical abuse seen in the published videos, but argued that the cases of child abuse coming to light showed that Hungary’s child protection schemes were working effectively to weed out wrongdoing.
Several government figures however, including Orbán’s, have emphasised that the juvenile residents of the facility had been placed there because they had committed crimes or engaged in other misconduct, likening the institution to a prison for minors.
Additional sources • AP