Maja was abducted to Budapest!

Maja has been in Hungary since June 28, 2024 10 am!
Now in the same prison where Ilaria was!

We are sad that we could not prevent the extradition.
We are angry about the shitty authorities who deported a queer anti-fascist person to an authoritarian, queer-hostile country!

The context:

Maja is a 23-year-old non-binary anti-fascist. Together with other anti-fascists, Maja is said to have attacked neo-Nazis in Budapest in February 2023. 

Since 1997, the neo-Nazi gathering “Day of Honor” has been held annually in Budapest – a glorification of National Socialism. At this event, Europe’s right wing re-enacts the attempted escape of the Wehrmacht, Waffen-SS and Hungarian collaborators from Budapest. In February 1945, the city was already surrounded by the Red Army.

Despite the authoritarian Orban regime, there were anti-fascist counter-protests. Several anti-fascists were checked or directly arrested in 2023 on charges of allegedly attacking neo-Nazis. While the press was selling those at first as innocent tourists, it became clear that those were international neo-Nazi cadres. Tobi from Germany and Ilaria from Italy were immediately remanded in custody. However, there is a longer list of anti-fascists who the Hungarian state has identified as guilty and who are now being sought.

For fear of being extradited to Hungary, many people have therefore gone into hiding. Maja was one of the people who went into hiding. At the end of December, however, Maja was arrested quite violently in Berlin. Since then, Maja has been in prison in Dresden, first in pre-trial detention, then in extradition custody.

The abduction to Hungary:

While Italian authorities under a fascist government! refused to extradite Gabriele due to the inhumane prison conditions , the German authorities are open to cooperating with the Orban regime. On Thursday, June 27, the Berlin Court of Appeal declared Maja’s extradition admissible. The information was deliberately delayed to Maja’s lawyers so that they could not appeal on Thursday. The application for a temporary injunction was therefore only received by the Federal Constitutional Court on Friday morning, June 28, at 7:38 am. At around 10.50 a.m., the BVG decided that the extradition would be temporarily prohibited and instructed the Berlin Public Prosecutor General’s Office to stop the extradition. The reply from the Public Prosecutor General’s Office came at 11:47 a.m., stating that Maja had already been handed over to the Hungarian authorities at 10 a.m.

Maja was taken out of her cell at around 3:30 a.m., had a brief phone call with her lawyer and was then taken to Hungary. Neither the relatives nor the lawyers were informed of Maja’s whereabouts at this point. Her family, friends and supporters had been standing outside the detention center since 6 a.m. waiting for an answer. It wasn’t until around midday, when the Federal Constitutional Court issued its decision, and it really became clear that Maja was actually in Hungary.

The Federal Constitutional Court:

Not that we, of all people, believe in the German rule of law. It is common practice that deportations, for example, are usually carried out in exactly the same way in order to prevent any possible legal recourse. However, the fact that institutions such as the Public Prosecutor General’s Office in Berlin explicitly ignore decisions by the Federal Constitutional Court and deliberately act contrary to them is something of a novelty in Germany. This says a lot about the political will to repress and the constitution of some German authorities. Maja’s lawyer had informed the officials at the prison about the appeal that night. The Federal Constitutional Court  itself had informed Berlin at 8:30 am. There would have been nothing to stop them from informing the Austrian authorities about Maja’s return.

Authoritarian Hungary:

Hungary has been ruled by Viktor Orban for 14 years. During this time, Orban has dismantled the so-called rule of law, massively restricted freedom of the press, freedom of expression and freedom of education, and carried out smear campaigns and repression against members of the opposition. Many intellectuals from the worlds of art, music, science and education have left the country. In 2022, the EU denied Hungary the status of a democracy and clearly characterized it as autocratic. The Nazi event described above is financially supported with government funds – state-sponsored historical revisionism!

In 2023, there was a massive hounding by the Hungarian press and neo-Nazis in connection with the attacks on the neo-Nazi cadres, with the publication of pictures of anti-fascists and information from the cops. There is a clear political mood in Hungary towards this court case.

The political ideological background of Hungary is national-religious with mythical narratives of millennia-old Magyarism and definitely anti-queer!

The government has already passed several laws: in 2020 it was made impossible for trans and inter people to change their gender entry in the civil register, in 2021 queer educational material for children and “advertising” for homosexuality and transgender was banned. Violence and discrimination against queer people are on the rise.

Maja is now in the prison where Ilaria was and about which Ilaria has written nothing good. Many people who have been in pre-trail detention in Hungary describe the inhumane prison conditions as hell. Hungary has already celebrated the fact that they have Maja and published a police video in which they show Maja tied up and on a leash. Right-wing websites also immediately picked up on the issue and started to stir up trouble. Maja awaits a political trial with a maximum sentence of 24 years!

The repression on the German side:

The Hungarian smear campaign against antifascist was gratefully picked up by the German press and neo-Nazis continued here. This played into the hands of the investigating authorities. For example, the secret police and the Soko LinX (the special commission is an investigation group of the Saxon criminal police) in Saxony have been trying for several years to stigmatize anti-fascist resistance as terrorism and to stage the existence of a new RAF. This was particularly evident in the trial of Lina and other defendants in the Antifa-Ost proceedings. In this trial, the conviction was based on paragraph 129 – formation of a criminal organization. Anti-fascists were not only convicted for explicit acts, but for being part of a so-called criminal organization. This criminal organization has now been expanded and all defendants in the Budapest trial are also accused of being part of this criminal organization. Tobi has already been convicted in Hungary on this absurd basis. So just for the sake of understanding: a Hungarian court adopts these fantastic ideas of Soko LinX and convicts a person of being part of a criminal organization without being able to prove any activity in this organization in Hungary! In other words, an explicitly politically motivated action with the purpose of exercising repression against anti-fascists!

The kidnapping and abduction of an anti-fascist to a queer-hostile and authoritarian country like Hungary is taking place under a government lead by socialdemocrats greens and liberals with a so-called value-based foreign policy led by Annalena Baerbock (Greens). The values represented here seem clear. There is no clear edge against the European shift to the right! Instead, the persecution of anti-fascists goes hand in hand with the authoritarian Orban regime.
The next person who may be threatened with extradition is Hanna. She is currently in pre-trial detention in Nuremberg prison.

We demand the immediate return of Maja!
No more extraditions to Hungary!
Freedom for all!
Anti-fascism is not criminal but necessary!