Budapest for Peace

Greenpeace Hungary held a peace demonstration with the participation of thousands of people on Heroes' Square in Budapest on Wednesday evening. The crowd formed a huge luminous peace sign with torches in hand.

The participants of the event protested against the invasion of Ukraine and expressed their sympathy for the innocent people suffering because of the war in this symbolic act.

"(…) This is what it means to gather together and send a message to those whose lives have been shattered in a few days that their pain is our pain. That we are with them," the organisation wrote on a social media site.

More than a hundred people sang on stage at the same time, and the canon Dona Nobis Pacem (Give us peace) was sung alongside Hungarian folk songs.

A little girl of Ukrainian descent and a woman born in Russia who has lived in Hungary for a long time also spoke to the audience. The latter, Natasha, tried to explain why the Russians dare not speak out against the war, how the free press is stifled and how public protest is harshly suppressed.

Greenpeace was originally founded more than 50 years ago to oppose nuclear disarmament, and they still believe that complete nuclear disarmament is a condition for peace in the world.