As I told in the comments of the first diary, unfortunately 23 October is not a day of peaceful national celebration, but one of division and hate (the origins of which I shall explain in episode five). Especially so this year.

As you may recall, last month the leak of a closed-doors speech by PM Gyurcsány in which he said he lied led to protests and riots by the right-to-far-right, worsened on one side by the involvement of experienced football hooligans, on the other side by police brutality (also applying 'experience' from football riots). I also reported that protests continued after local elections (both by the far-right and the right) and further mess. As the far-righters believe to be in the footsteps of the '56ers, and there was a permanent far-right protest before Parliament (also the place of state ceremonies) with a permit until the 25th, new troubles for the 23th were pre-programmed.

To recount the events of the day (the first part already covered in my first 1956 diary with pictures):

• On the eve of the celebrations, after police provoked the breakdown of talks with demands unacceptable to (part of) the far-right permanent protesters before Parliament, that protest was dispersed.
  
• Then in the late morning, a right-to-far-right rally formed anew, and marched to a legal cerebration site, but later part of it (a few thousands) decided to retake the square before Parliament.
  
• Police held up these and started to push them along one main road using the whole range of its non-lethal arsenal: tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets, beating with batons, and beating with the flat side of bayonets in charges by mounted police. In the course of this, some protesters even stole and activated a preserved WWII tank.
  
• Meanwhile, the main opposition party, right-populist Fidesz held a 100,000-strong mass rally (which also had a guest from the EPP). As their crowd started to go home, police pushed the rioters upon them, and didn't select between people to beat.

During the course of this action, according to witnesses they also shot and beat a Fidesz leader, who even fell unconscious and has short-term amnesia. Then again, Fidesz and this politician himself countinued to play a rhetorical double game: on one hand protesting that police treats them as one with the rioters, on the other hand, not distancing themselves from the far-righters. (And yet again, government politicians continue their despicable don't-criticise-the-police routine.)

A hardcore of maybe five thousand held out in the tear gas haze, whom police then parted in two and drove in opposite directions. But they were apparently acclimatising to tear gas, thus kind of a stalemate formed. (From here on I was channel-flipping between live coverages.) After reinforcements arrived, sometime after 22h, one half was dispersed by pushing the crowd in different directions.

But the other half, at one end of a bridge of the Danube, found a construction site, demolished the scaffolding, built a major barricade, and soaked it in gasoline. Fearing fire, police made one of their only two right decisions of the day: with real and feigned preparations, they played for time. Indeed from 22:30 to 01:30, the crowd reduced from around 2,000 to maybe 400 or less. Then they attacked from both ends of the bridge, quickly passed the feared barricade with a snowplow and two water cannon vehicles, estinguished the fire of Molotov coctails that fell well short of their target, and then cops on foot ran to catch whom they could.

While only a few police were hurt this time (but including one who was stabbed), about a hundred civilians were treated. The most serious was a man rubber-bulleted in the eye and another whose skin parted on his temple from the bayonet of a mounted policeman. There were less than a dozen serious injuries, the majority got bruises and bloodshots from rubber bullets and batons.

Police was truly brutal and indiscriminate: I saw a lone protester beaten by five riot policemen after he was captured, and one state television reporter was beaten twice (the second time when he was sitting out his pain from the first on a staircase) despite carrying the fluorescent jacket agreed on with police. (The reporters really got it this time: the rioters also attacked the teams of multiple channels.) Police also again behaved like madmen towards the uninvolved: they yelled at café guests to go inside and hunted out moviegoers from a cinema some rioters fled to. This was the more insane considering the second of only two right decisions they made: they used the water cannons not to "wash away" people, but to shower them with blue-tinted water, thus paint-marking those who were really involved.

As a final note: the showcased police ineptness and brutality is actually their 'experience'. This is how they conduct themselves on football riots: leaving troublemakers in big groups rather than going among them, often stupidly reacting too late, when reacting then with indiscriminate brutality, and that despite applying some advanced methods (like lifting out ringleaders and placing covert agents). A protest I attended also faced this routine: the big February 2003 anti-Iraq-war protest, which was disrupted by a large far-right contingent that first insulted exile-Iraqi and Jewish speakers, then started fights with leftist protesters, to which police responded not by separating sides but surrounding and pushing away the whole melee...

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}