Ilaria Salis challenges Orban, returns to Hungary for the first time after prison: she will march at the Pride banned by the government

Ilaria Salis returns to Hungary , to Budapest, where on 11 February 2023 she was arrested on charges of having participated in at least two attacks against three far-right militants during the “ Day of Honour ”, a Nazi reenactment in memory of Hitler's troops killed by the Red Army besieging the city.

Now a MEP for the Green-Left Alliance, after spending a year and a half in Hungarian prisons for those charges, Salis will return to the Hungarian capital for the Budapest Pride March , the march organised by the Hungarian LGBTQ community despite the ban imposed by the authoritarian government of Viktor Orban .

The event is scheduled for June 28 and will challenge the Hungarian law that bans events such as Pride. Salis, who was able to leave house arrest in Budapest after being elected MEP, will return to Hungary for the first time .

The Italian activist will not be alone. Other MEPs from various groups in the European Parliament will march with her, from the left to the European People's Party.

A group that, thanks to parliamentary immunity, in theory cannot be arrested or prosecuted by the Hungarian justice system, which is still "hunting" Salis: Orban's government has asked Strasbourg to revoke their immunity in order to be able to try her.

Relations between Salis and the Hungarian government have been tense for some time. After the approval of the law banning Pride "to ensure that only assemblies that take into account the right of children to adequate physical, mental and moral development are held in Hungary", the Italian MEP had accused "the Orban regime" of "using facial recognition cameras to identify dissidents who still dare to demonstrate, going against the principles of the European law on artificial intelligence". Words to which Orban's spokesman, Zoltan Kovacs, had responded as follows: "The protection of minors is not negotiable: anarchists/communists have no say in the matter".