Original source: http://www.france24.com/en/201102...t-gay-pride-banned-police-organisers

AFP - Hungarian police have blocked this year's annual Budapest Gay Pride parade, the organisers announced Monday, slamming what they said was a politically motivated move.

"The Budapest police chief has withdrawn the permission that was granted earlier to the organisers of the 2011 gay pride march," Sandor Steigler, head of the organising Rainbow Mission Foundation, told AFP.

The organisation was preparing a court appeal, he added.

Last week, the organisers of the march applied for an extension to their usual downtown route, which police had earlier accepted.

The extension would have taken the march in front of parliament, where marchers planned to protest against Hungary's controversial media law and the upcoming new constitution, both perceived as detrimental to the cause of gay rights, Steigler said.

The Rainbow Mission eventually modified its request so that the march would have stopped short of the square, as proposed by police.

But by Friday, permission for the entire march had been withdrawn, citing a disproportionate disruption to traffic, Steigler said.

"We suspect that the decision was politically motivated... a lot of things have happened in politics since the last march," he commented.

Last April, Hungary's Socialist government was replaced by the conservatives of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose Fidesz party holds a two-thirds majority in parliament, allowing it to amend the constitution.

Although the pride march last year ended peacefully, the event has often attracted counter-demonstrations that have occasionally turned violent.

In 2008, far-right anti-gay protesters threw Molotov cocktails and attacked participants of the march.