Queer Hungarians in Berlin: 'We can finally hold hands in public'
Anti-gay and transgender legislation in Hungary have sparked condemnation of Viktor Orban's government and prompted LGBTQ individuals to leave the country. Some of them have made their way to Berlin.
Gabor and Endre moved to Berlin in 2022
Over the past years, the situation for LGBTQ individuals in many EU countries has improved, even if often only haltingly. But Hungary is another story. There, homophobia and transphobia have become not only staples of government policy but also national ideology.
Since the end of 2020, the country's constitution has contained indirectly homophobic passages in addition to the following sentence: "The mother is a woman, the father is a man." It is also all but illegal for gay couples to adopt children.
Ahead of a referendum dealing with anti-LGBT topics, the government
put up posters saying 'Protect our children!'
Moreover, since summer 2021, representing or promoting homosexuality and gender reassignment surgery to or in the presence of people 18 years of age or younger has been criminalized. Critics say the law also equates pedophilia with homosexuality and transgender identities.
DW interviewed queer Hungarians who felt suffocated by Victor Orban's government policies and emigrated to Berlin.
Stay or go?
"It was a kick in the face when the law limiting information about homosexuality and trans topics entered the books," says 47-year-old Gabor*. The gay film and theater professional moved with his 37-year-old partner, Endre, to Berlin this past June to start a new life.
"Many queer people spend years working to overcome their self-hate. Then they spend a bunch of time fighting to develop their own survival strategies. When they finally reach the point where they can try to live, they get stomped upon by those at the top. That is the moment when you have to decide: Either you let yourself by squashed or you get out of there," Gabor says.
Gabor und Endre in their apartment in late summer 2022
It's easier said than done — and few know this better than Blanka Vay. The 43-year-old Hungarian trans woman left Budapest in back in 2014, when she was still a married man. Blanka had previously served as the Hungarian Green party's spokesperson and worked as a communications manager for Greenpeace. For her, the greatest challenge after emigrating was neither German bureaucracy nor the absence of social connections.
Not an easy start in Berlin
"The reason I had such an expectedly hard start to my new life was definitely my trans identity," she explains. "Berlin is a good place for sexual diversity of all kinds. But gender reassignment surgery is also not easy here. Six years ago, when I came out as a trans woman, I could already speak fluent German, and I had a promising CV. I still couldn't find a job for one and a half years. Then I worked as a bicycle delivery person for another one and half years and basically turned to mush," Vay recalls.
Blanka Vay presenting her autobiographical book in Budapest in 2021
Today, Blanka works as the chief executive officer of a cooperative. Despite the difficulties she faced, she is thankful to be in a tolerant city like Berlin.
"Even though I was a member of the intellectual and moral elite in Budapest, my networks wouldn't have been strong enough to protect me. I was horrified to see how Hungarians willingly identified with the most appalling and atrocious policies and gave up the basic intellectual questioning that any reasonable person does before they internalize an idea."
Toying with human lives
In Gabor's opinion, President Viktor Orban's anti-LGBTQ policies do nothing less than toy with people's lives. Gabor is lucky: He is an experienced screenplay writer who is doing a postgraduate degree at the German Film and Television Academy, and he will probably find a job in Berlin quickly once he has graduated.
Another silver lining in the couples' emigration saga: Gabor's spouse, Endre, is a product designer, a profession which is in high demand in the international labor market. He quickly found a permanent position in Berlin, which made it much easier for them to rent an apartment.
A demonstration against homophobia in Budapest in June 2021
A feeling of being abandoned
Things look very different for another Hungarian couple: Viktor and Janos, who moved to the Berlin neighborhood of Schoneberg three months ago. Viktor, 48, is among the many thousands of Hungarian intellectuals who have left their country in the past years for political reasons. He left behind not only his property and his family but also Budapest's art scene,which provided a refuge for him. He even gave up a secure job in a Budapest cultural institution.
"In Hungary, I felt like I'd been left totally alone. What scared me the most was the level that the political rhetoric sank to. For example, during this past spring's parliamentary election, one of the ruling party's most primitive campaign slogans about the opposition party went: 'They are dangerous. Let them try to stop us!' The communication is at the level of a kindergarten," Viktor, a theater professional, says of his decision.
Anti-gay demonstrators in Budapest in June 2021 hold up a sign reading
"Being different is disgusting"
The greatest threat to Hungary?
For Viktor, the straw that broke the camel's back was the "homophobic" law that equates sexual orientations that deviate from the heterosexual norms and trans identities with pedophilia.
He also finds it grotesque that public broadcasters, which are tightly censored, have repeatedly hammered home one message over the past year: Hungarian children must be protected from the so-called gender lobby. Prime Minister Orban even recently said in a speech that the greatest threat to Hungary was not the war in neighboring Ukraine but rather migrants and "gender."
Daily life without rights
"I don't understand how something like this can happen. Why don't millions of Hungarians refuse to tolerate being spoken to by the government in such a primitive way?" Viktor asks. "Why don't we laugh at them and vote them out?" But his disappointment over his homeland cannot overshadow the happiness of his life in Berlin.
For him and his partner Janos, a music teacher, walking together through the city continues to be the most wonderful experience.
"We've been together 19 years, and this is the first time that we can stroll around in public holding hands. We may not have been beaten up in Budapest for doing this, but it's about the mental state of gay people who live in Hungary," Viktor says. "You get used to the feeling of not having the right to take a walk while holding hands."
*Name has been changed. The real name of the subject is known to the author and editor. Four out of five people interviewed by DW (Gabor, Endre, Viktor and Janos) agreed to speak on the condition that their real names not be published.
This article has been translated from German.
DW RECOMMENDS
Hungary orders restrictions on children's books with gay themes
Iran: Rights groups slam death sentences
for LGBTQ activists
Iran is considered one of the most repressive places in the
world for the LGBTQ community, which faces constant
threats, intimidation and widespread social stigma.
Iran is second only to China worldwide when it comes to the number of people sentenced to death
Iran said this week that a court had sentenced to death two female gay rights activists for "spreading corruption on earth" — a charge frequently imposed on people deemed to have broken the country's Shariah laws.
The country's official IRNA news agency reported that the two women, Zahra Sedighi Hamedani, 31, and Elham Chobdar, 24, "misused" women and girls in promising better training and job opportunities abroad — a reference to human trafficking.
A revolutionary court in the country's northwestern city of Urmia, some 600 kilometers (370 miles) northwest of the capital Tehran, handed down the death sentences. The women have the right to appeal.
They were informed of the sentence while in detention in the women's wing of the Urmia jail.
In a short statement, the Iranian judiciary confirmed that the sentences had been issued.
Anger and frustration at the verdict
Law experts say the charge of spreading corruption on earth is particularly vague and that the provision allows Islamic Revolutionary Courts — which handle cases like corruption on earth, enmity against God and drug trafficking — to abuse their legal powers and gives them a free hand in imposing capital punishment.
The verdict was slammed by foreign-based rights groups and activists.
They described the two women as local gay and lesbian rights activists working for the betterment of the LGBTQ community in the Islamic nation.
Many Iranians living abroad also took to social media to express their anger.
6Rang, an Iranian LGBTQ rights group based in Germany, called the verdict against the two women "unfair and unclear" and part of the regime's effort to "spread hatred" in society. The group called for increased global pressure on Tehran to free the two women.
Zahra Sedighi Hamedani (l) and Elham Chobdar (r) were sentenced to death by an Iranian court for "spreading corruption on earth"
The fate of Sedighi Hamedani, also known as Sareh, has been a cause for concern for months.
Sareh was arrested in October by Iranian security forces while trying to flee to Turkey after returning to Iran from Iraqi Kurdistan, where she had been based.
Global human rights watchdog Amnesty International said in January the charges against Sareh stemmed from her activism on social media in defense of gay rights.
She also appeared in a BBC documentary aired in May 2021 about the abuses LGBTQ people suffer in the Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq.
She had decided to leave Iraqi Kurdistan after being detained by the regional authorities.
It appears she crossed into Iran again before trying to head for Turkey.
A repressive place for LGBTQ people
In a video clip shared with her friend prior to her arrest, Sareh said she was "about to cross the border to Turkey" since she was afraid her "life is at risk."
She pointed out that she could be arrested any minute as security forces had identified her and her friends.
"All I wanted was for everyone to know about the pain and suffering the LGBTQ community is enduring in Iran and that we want to be recognized in order to live freely," she said in the video, shared with 6Rang.
"The journey towards freedom may cost our lives, but we are determined to take it and either live in freedom or die," she added.
6Rang said Chobdar, the other Iranian woman sentenced to death, owns a wedding boutique in Urumiya and is a friend of Sareh.
According to the rights group, Chobdar used to talk on her Instagram channel about issues affecting LGBTQ people in Iran, and that's why she was arrested by authorities for "promoting homosexuality."
Shadi Amin, a coordinator for 6Rang, condemned the death sentences as well as the repression faced by the LGBTQ community in Iran.
Homosexuality is illegal in Iran with its penal code explicitly criminalizing same-sex sexual behavior for both men and women.
The country is considered one of the most repressive places in the world for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, who face constant threats, intimidation and widespread social stigma.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi recently described homosexuality as an "ugly and despicable practice" and said it's part of a "propaganda campaign by the West" in Muslim countries.
Call for global pressure on Iran
Amin told DW that the families of the two women were under enormous pressure not to talk to media about the fate of their loved ones and about the "misconduct and torture" they're experiencing in prison.
She called on Germany and other foreign governments to put pressure on Iran for the release of the women. Amin stressed that the international community must do more to put an end to the repression of the LGBTQ community in the Middle East nation.
Under Iranian law, crimes such as murder, rape, drug trafficking and sodomy can lead to capital punishment. Iran is second only to China worldwide when it comes to the number of people sentenced to death.
The UN's independent investigator on human rights in Iran warned last year that the country continues to execute prisoners "at an alarming rate."
Earlier this year, Iran reportedly executed two gay men on charges of sodomy.
Edited by: Srinivas Mazumdaru
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