”The Right To Provoke” is a 2016 documentary by Mátyás Kálmán and Róbert Bordás from TASZ / HCLU (Hungarian Civil Liberties Union). It follows the story of Andrea Giuliano, an Italian human rights activist, artist and photographer, who became the victim of several hate crimes in Hungary due to his activism and a parody he staged against far-right political forces and bigotry. He received hundreds
of threats, neo-nazis placed a bounty on his head, he escaped attempted attacks and had to flee his home several times for safety reasons. He eventually lost his job and was sued for defamation by the very same person who had placed a bounty on him. Yet Hungarian authorities refused to intervene and protect him, rejecting his multiple reports, leaving him exposed and in danger. Andrea Giuliano and TASZ have documented his testimony to apply to the European Court of Human Rights in order to stress the important distinctions between freedom of expression or opinion, as opposed to hate crimes, hate speech, abuse of power and homo-bi-transphobic discrimination, which have effects of the utmost gravity. This is in order to show how necessary it is to demand a thorough and truly efficient legislation on anti-homo-bi-transphobia at least across the territory of the EU, in the hopes this can serve as an example and expand beyond its borders.
”The Right To Provoke” follows the events leading to Andrea Giuliano’s decision to leave Hungary after its authorities deliberately and irreversibly rejected all his attempts to seek justice. This documentary begins to reveal the tip of the iceberg of Hungary’s present condition, but has deeper implications. It sheds some light on Hungary’s current, continuously questioned, Rule of Law, and its government’s extreme views and political measures on social issues that obstruct civil liberties, making life so very difficult for minorities.
