Yellow ribbons in honour of Israeli hostages were defaced in Budapest

The Kidma Association commemorated the Israeli hostages being held by Hamas for over a year with a thousand yellow ribbons in Budapest, which were defaced in several places in the city in an organised action.

The Kidma Association reported the incident on its Facebook page:

„… the 1,000 giant yellow bows were an elegant way of raising awareness of the 101 Israeli hostages being held in Gaza. However, not everyone liked it in Budapest. When we started to collect the bows a week later on Sunday, we noticed that in some places, there were even fewer than expected. In Józsefváros, where we originally put out about 150 bows, we were able to pick up one single yellow bow. That was only left there because three cameras were pointed at it. The rest were dumped by someone around Tuesday-Wednesday. In Nehru Park in Ferencváros, a similar number of yellow bows were put on the trees. On Saturday morning, there were still a lot of them, but on Sunday morning ,only half a dozen were left, but even those had been meticulously sprayed with red paint. In both cases, it is difficult not to suspect intent.”

According to the association, the vandalism goes beyond the issue of freedom of expression, it is an organised act of vandalism that is not excused, and it is highly likely that the vandalism is politically motivated.

„We consider this to be undeserving of the hostages, for whom we wanted to express our solidarity. With the 1000 yellow ribbons, we did not speak about the war, we did not express an opinion on the „Palestinian cause” – we brought purely humanitarian aspects into the Hungarian public sphere on the first anniversary of the outbreak of the conflict. We are convinced that there is an overwhelming majority of well-meaning citizens in Budapest, for whom mass hostage-taking is unacceptable, and we are sure that most of them are not indifferent to the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza.

We believe that although dozens of CCTV cameras may have recorded the vandalism of the banners, it makes more sense to go public than a police report, in the hope that the majority will understand that what happened is not right.”

Source: tev.hu

Photo credit: Kidma