BUDAPEST: Hungarian opposition leader Peter Magyar walked across the border to Romania on Saturday after a week-long journey, in a attempt to win support of the ethnic Hungarians in Romania and appeal to conservative voters in the run-up to the 2026 elections.
Magyar’s center-right Tisza party emerged last year to mount the most serious challenge to nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban since he rose to power in 2010.
Most opinion polls now put Tisza ahead of Orban’s Fidesz party with the next parliamentary elections due in early 2026. No date has been set yet.
Carrying Hungary’s national flag, Magyar walked across the border on Saturday morning with a group of supporters.
“We are not going (to Romania) to escalate tensions or to cause any harm to our Hungarian brothers and sisters living there. We are going there to express our solidarity,” Magyar said on May 14 when he set out on foot in hiking gear.
On his way to the border, Magyar stopped in small towns to talk to rural voters, who have traditionally supported conservative Orban.
Orban’s government provides financial support to ethnic Hungarian communities in Romania and in 2014 granted the right to vote to Hungarians living abroad. In the last election in 2022 94 percent of these voters supported Fidesz.
The latest poll by the Publicus think tank, published on Friday, showed Tisza with 43 percent support among decided voters in Hungary while Fidesz had 36 percent.
Magyar announced his march on May 12 after Orban flagged he could cooperate with Romanian hard-right presidential candidate George Simion ahead of the May 18 election there.
The RMDSZ party representing ethnic Hungarians in Romania, said Simion’s win would pose a threat to minorities’ rights and urged its voters to support centrist Nicusor Dan who ended up winning the vote.
Hungarian opposition leader Magyar walks to Romania, courting ethnic Hungarians
https://arab.news/4jwgy
Hungarian opposition leader Magyar walks to Romania, courting ethnic Hungarians
- Hungarian opposition leader Peter Magyar walked across the border to Romania on Saturday to try and win the support of ethnic Hungarians in Romania
- Magyar says he is not going to cause trouble, rather to express solidarity with his Hungarian "brothers and sisters"
US warns UK to stop arresting Palestine Action supporters
- Undersecretary of state for diplomacy: Arrests doing ‘more harm than good’ and ‘censoring’ free speech
- Group was banned in July 2025 after series of break-ins
LONDON: UK authorities should stop arresting protesters showing support for banned group Palestine Action, the White House has warned.
The US undersecretary of state for diplomacy said arrests are doing “more harm than good” and are “censoring” free speech.
Sarah Rogers told news site Semafor: “I would have to look at each individual person and each proscribed organization. I think if you support an organization like Hamas, then depending upon whether you’re coordinating, there are all these standards that get applied.
“This Palestine Action group, I’ve seen it written about. I don’t know what it did. I think if you just merely stand up and say, ‘I support Palestine Action’, then unless you are really coordinating with some violent foreign terrorist, I think that censoring that speech does more harm than good.”
So far, more than 2,000 people have been arrested in the UK for showing support for the group.
It was banned in July 2025 after a series of break-ins nationwide, including at a facility owned by a defense manufacturer and a Royal Air Force base, during which military aircraft were damaged.
Last year, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg was among those arrested while protesting for Palestine Action.
The group is challenging its ban, saying it should not be compared to terrorist organizations such as the Irish Republican Army, Daesh or Al-Qaeda.
The ban has been criticized by numerous bodies, with Amnesty International calling it a case of “problematic, overly broad and draconian restrictions on free speech.”
In Scotland, prosecutors have been offering to drop charges against some protesters in return for accepting a fine of £100 ($134.30).
Adam McGibbon, who was arrested at a demonstration in Edinburgh last year, refused the offer, saying: “The fact that the authorities are offering fines equivalent to a parking ticket for a ‘terrorism offence’ shows just how ridiculous these charges are. Do supporters of (Daesh) get the same deal?
“I refuse to pay this fine, as has everyone else I know who has been offered one. Just try and put all 3,000 of us who have defied this ban so far in jail.”
Rogers said the UK is also wrong to arrest people using the phrase “globalize the intifada” while demonstrating in support of Palestine, after police in Manchester said in December that it would detain people chanting it.
“I’m from New York City where thousands of people were murdered by jihadists,” she said. referring to the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “I don’t want an intifada in New York City, and I think anyone who does is disgusting, but should it be legal to say in most contexts? Yes.”
