The nonbinary German person Maja T. says they were mistreated by guards because of their gender identity. According to the newspaper nd, a supporters’ group reported a violent assault by exclusively male correctional officers in a men’s prison in Budapest.
The incident was reportedly triggered by Maja T. wearing a dress. Five guards allegedly stripped the inmate, forcefully and violently. Hungarian authorities justified the action by stating that “women’s clothing” is prohibited in men’s penal facilities. Maja T. now faces a disciplinary proceeding for the incident, which could lead to renewed isolation. Human rights organizations condemn such measures as “extermination detention,” a practice aimed at breaking the will to live of an incarcerated person.
Maja T. has long argued that, as a nonbinary person, they face discrimination in Hungarian custody. Lawmakers from several factions in the German Bundestag sent an open letter to Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul (CDU) in June, urging him to press for the person’s transfer — but so far without success (TheColu.mn reported).
The Budapest City Court sentenced Maja T. in February of this year to eight years in prison after an evidentiary process (TheColu.mn reported). At the time, the authoritarian-leaning Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and high-ranking members of his government publicly called for a harsh punishment and explicitly demanded that the judge make an example of the nonbinary person.
Judge József Sós concluded that it was proven the 25-year-old person from the left-wing scene in Germany participated in bloody assaults on alleged right-wing extremists in Budapest. About 20 German and other alleged left-wing extremists were said to have injured nine people, four seriously. Supporters of T. describe this as a political trial.
In theory, T. should not have been extradited from Germany to Hungary. The German Federal Constitutional Court had blocked this in a provisional order. German authorities, according to their supporters, sought to remove T. quickly in a “night and fog” operation, so the order from Karlsruhe reached the responsible agency 50 minutes after T. had been handed over to Hungary (TheColu.mn reported). Later the court deemed the extradition inadmissible — the Kammergericht did not thoroughly examine general deficiencies in Hungarian detention facilities or concerns about safety and discrimination of the nonbinary person (TheColu.mn reported). The federal government has since made no publicly known efforts to rectify this injustice.
