Protesters clash with police in front of PM’s office

After a group of young people were pepper-sprayed by police in front of the Prime Minister’s office on Wednesday night, news outlets disagree on the nature of the protest.

At the end of a thousand-strong demonstration against a new law that deprives teachers of their status as public servants, a group of students and Momentum activists went up to Castle Hill in Buda to try and dismantle the barricades around a nearby construction site. Some debris was thrown at police and the police responded with pepper spray and occasionally batons. A Momentum MP was briefly detained.

In the headline of its report on the clashes on 444, Sándor Czinkóczi writes ‘the smell of tear gas has become a basic experience of an angry, abandoned generation’. In his closing remark, he interprets the events of Wednesday night as showing ‘to what extent those in power are uninterested in these young people’.

Mandiner, on the other hand, quotes a Facebook post by Gábor Bencsik who is convinced that the demonstrators have no popular support. He invites them to try to approach the office of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and see what the British police would do if they tried to dismantle the barricades at the end of Downing Street.

Tags: demonstration, police, tachers