Wine and Molotov Cocktails: Anatomy of a Budapest riot

BUDAPEST, Hungary - On Hungary's most important national holiday Monday, my roommate Robin, an American college student, and I are sitting outside a small pub drinking wine and talking politics with two young Hungarian lawyers we've just met, Noemi and Attila.

That is, until a tear gas cannister lands directly in front of us.

We grab our drinks, eyes streaming and cheeks stinging with pain, and run inside the restaurant. We watch through clear glass doors as a line of riot police advance down Rákóczi Utca, a major thoroughfare that has been blocked by protesters since about 4 p.m. People scatter in all directions. Some run inside, including one bearded,long-haired man who hides in the back. The police bang on the pub door, argue with the owner for a few minutes, then walk away without entering.

I look around at my companions. Noemi and Robin are both 24 years old, young women who are viewing their first major world event. Their eyes shine with excitement well after the effects of the tear gas have faded.



Robin's video of us getting tear gassed in Budapest.


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On this fiftieth anniversary commemorating Hungary's failed rebellion of 1956, brutally crushed by the Soviets, the focus is on current politics, not history. It's been just a month since Hungarian Radio played tapes of Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány admitting that he and his socialist party "lied to the people morning, noon and night."

Since then, nearly every day the former communist party's opponents have gathered in the streets in front of the Parliament Building for protests that launched two days of small riots but which have mostly remained peaceful. The waning interest in the gatherings was refueled once again two weeks ago by a no-confidence vote proposed and survived by Gyurcsány, who knew he had the support of parliament behind him.

"Fuck You Gyurcsány" read one of the signs, held by a greasy-looking leather-coat clad protester, that I saw at one of the daily gatherings in front of Parliament last thursday. Right next to him was a prim middle-aged woman, waving a Hungarian flag and singing patriotic songs. They made an odd pairing, but the protests have continued to draw a strange mix: a moderate rightist party called Fidesz, and more extreme groups associated with both anti-semetic skinhead tendencies.

They all want something similar: for Gyurcsány to resign and his socialist party, recently re-elected for a four-year term, to lose its grasp on parliament.

Our new acquaintances Noemi and Attila are the former, they explain.

That's how they came to be sitting at the pub on Rákóczi Utca, watching what started out as a peaceful, 40,000 strong Fidesz protest during Monday's holiday turn into a stand-off between riot police armed with tear gas and rubber bullets and a few thousand protesters, who are burning garbage cans, throwing glass bottles and screaming Hungarian epiteths.

"We do support Fidesz," says Noemi, a spunky, well-dressed, attractive blond. "But I think this has become ... how do you say? ridiculous."

Attila, her boyfriend, simply shakes his head. He hates the communists, he says, because they ruined his mother and grandparents' lives. But this conflict, which he sees as pointless, only makes him sad. As attorneys in the process of being hired by the police department, they feel sympathy for the police, even though the police are currently defending a government they don't like.

So they don't participate, but like us, they watch. And sometimes get a little too close to the action.

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I had found the protests, about a mile from where I live, by following the long line of police cars and ambulances that wailed through the streets by my flat. I push forward as a crush of people ran back, and find myself suddenly facing a glittering, serpentine line of policemen. I look to the left and see blood on the ground --someone injured, though not seriously, by a tear gas container, I'm later told. I hear a whistling sound, and run the other direction. This tear gas cannister doesn't land near me, but I still feel a little stinging in my eyes.

I run down a side street and call Robin. "You are studying European History," I say. "Come out here and see it happen."

She joins me, and we stand for two hours. So do the police, holding the line, not advancing, but occasionally firing tear gas or rubber bullets at the crowd. So do the protesters, who stand just far enough away to avoid the worst of the gas. Then we sit, introduce ourselves to Noemi and Attila, order glasses of wine, and wait.

A German tourist tries surreptiously to take our photograph, but Noemi quickly puts a stop to it, grabbing the camera and viewing the picture before asking him to delete it. "We work for the police," she says, smiling apologetically afterwards. "I think maybe we shouldn't be in any photos."

The column of police officers advances suddenly, without warning. Within minutes, the streets are cleared.

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Attila gets a call on his cell phone. He hangs up and looks disturbed.

"My friends say four people have died on the Erzebet Bridge," he says. The protest we have seen is tiny, apparently, in comparison to the larger group a mile down the road.

I am skeptical, but Robin and I decid to check it out. We bid goodbye to Attila and Noemi, who wander off in a different direction, possibly to go dancing.

We walk down Rákóczi's now empty sidewalks, save for the dozens of police wandering about. We walk past bricks smashed by protesters for throwing at police, a still smouldering garbage can, a stone wall with a chunk torn out of it's side. It's eerily quiet, until we turn down a side street and walk down Vaci Utca, a fashionable shopping street that is the last place one would imagine a protest to be located.

We turn the corner and suddenly, there it is, right next to the bridge: it's 10:30 p.m. and we have come upon an impressive barricade, built with pieces of scrap wood and metal. Once again, a line of police holds steady, occasionally lobbing tear gas to control the crowds.

One of the protesters, seeing us try to navigate the barrier, politely offers his hand so we can step across and join the two or three thousand people on the other side. Another comes up, unbidden, and repeats the rumor that four people have died tonight.

"The first," he says in shaky English, "was an old lady. The police run her over. The second, a young boy, 7 years old, gets shot in the face."

The information just doesn't ring true, which we confirm when we run into a journalist friend a few minutes later. Michael Logan is a Scottish journalist who has covered the protests for a German Press Agency and the Christian Science Monitor. Mike has been in Budapest two years, and knows enough Hungarian to conduct most of his interviews exclusively in it.

"That's rubbish," he says. "I've been here all night, and haven't seen anything. Just look around, does this look like a particularly riled up crowd, which has just seen four deaths?"

And he's right. The crowd seems oddly calm, despite the fact that a fairly efficient group at the front of the barricades is making, lighting and tossing molotov cocktails. There is enough of an expanse between the barricaded protesters and the police, though, that these homemade bombs don't make much of an impact.

"I saw one guy with such bad aim that he threw it and it bounced off the wall and back at his feet," says Mike, chuckling.

So we stand for another two hours, waiting and watching. We see anti-semitic statements scrawled in the cement road, though it is hard to tell among the seemingly mild-mannered crowd who would be capable of the scrawls. Some of the far right shave their heads and wave Hungarian Nazi flags, but there don't seem to be many of these types out tonight.

The crowd begins quietly, subtly, to thin out. They've got to be to work tomorrow, after all. Another journalist, a Brit named Neal who is covering the protests for the Spectator, joins us. His friend, Tomas, a 37-year-old Hungarian who runs an art gallery, is bitter. "These people have no strength," Tomas says. "Hungarians have no strength."

Mike tells us he's heard a protester managed to start up and drive at least of the vintage tanks left on the streets as part of an official 1956 revolution display. We later see the tank being returned by large police truck to it's rightful place. "That's what happens when you leave a tank outside with the keys in the ignition," Mike says.

Neal and Mike surmise that the police are simply holding the line and giving much of the crowd the opportunity to disperse. They take turns guessing what time the inevitable charge will come.

We get beers at a 24 hour shop, and drink them in the street while we wait. Who knew that a riot could actually be boring?

In the end, the police move at about 1:30 a.m. We run down the fashionable Vaci Street alongside the remaining protesters, tear gas cannisters whizzing by, with the improbable vision of 50 police officers in full riot gear running half-heartedly after us.

Robin is filming, running and trying not to wipe her streaming eyes, which just spreads the tear gas more quickly. She is smiling the broadest smile I've ever seen on her.

"This is the most amazing night of my life," she says. She laughs, then apologizes. "I know it's not funny," she says, "but I feel alive. I am history, I'm not just reading about it."

And with that, we all head off to the pub for one last drink.