Critical Pride Dear comrades, dear friends, dear queers, I have the privilege of representing today the Stuttgart Solidarity Circle (Solikreis), which emerged at the beginning of this year from previous solidarity structures and primarily organises, in close coordination with Rote Hilfe (Red Help), solidarity work for left-wing, antifascists comrades facing incarceration. About a year ago, Maja was extradited to Hungary. Maybe you remember when the news hit. Without notice, Maja was taken out of her cell at around 3:30AM in a coordinated action of the Criminal Police Office (LKA) of Saxony. Hungary’s extradition request had been granted by the Berlin Court of Appeal. Maja was put into a helicopter towards the Austian border by officers acting clandestinely. By the time their lawyer was able to submit an urgent appeal to the Federal Constitutional Court, which subsequently ruled the extradition as illegal, Maja was already in the hands of Hungarian authorities. Ever since, Maja has been sitting in solitary confinement. And, should this be mentioned again, in custody. While never having been convicted. In as early as 1842, the novelist Charles Dickens protested against solitary confinement and de- scribed it, since it leaves no clearly visible bodily marks, as white torture and as fundamentally worse than any physically administered torture. The few human contacts that Maja has been able to experienced so far have consisted in humilia- tions, in the form of body searches, hourly checks in their cell that deprive them of sleep, the lousy, sometimes moudly food brought over to them, the court hearings at which Maja is lead to on a leash, handcuffed and shackled, accompanied by two hooded cops with machine guns, and every- thing in a language Maja does not understand and cannot defend themselves in. In the meantime, our comrade is only allowed to be visited by family and friends on very rare occasions. Hungary is a state in which the shift to the Right is even more advanced than here. For years, the Orban government has distanced itself loud and clear from any form of Rule of law and from any European minimal standards. But that’s not all. Maja is a non-binary person. As if the situation wasn’t already fucked up enough, Maja was - in complete awareness of this - given to the hands of a repressive state, which pursues an agressively queerphobic agenda. This plays a particular role in the perspective of repression, since Maja is exposed to the arbitrariness of the Hungarian justice and to the prison guards who have enabled in the first place such inhumane prison conditions and who ensure their permanence. By this we don’t mean incorrect pronouns on documents that Maja can’t understand anyway, but the violent contempt that Maja is met with in their daily dealings. Since Maja cannot endure these conditions any longer, they’ve been on hunger strike for 24 days and have long since reached a critical phase. The Stuttgart Solikreis has organised a trip to one of Maja’s trial dates, and two weeks ago we were at the court hearing to put out our solidarity into practice and support Maja, even if only through our presence on site. Solikreis Stuttgart’s speech at Critical Pride on 28.06.2025 English Version When we arrived at the courthouse, we were greeted by a handful of fascists with a banner reading “Antfascum out of our country”. Our faces were individually filmed and, among other things, sever- al of us were asked: “are you gay?”. Firstly, yes you Nazi pisshead, I am gay. Secondly, you can clear- ly see here how we as queers are marked as enemies by the fascists. At the same time, queerness is associated with anti-fascism, which are narratively mixed up with any left-wing, progressive politic, and hatred is stirred up towards anyone who doesn’t fit into this pathetic world view. On this very same day, Budapest Pride is taking place. An event that was banned by Hungarian lawmakers a few weeks ago, amid loud protests from the few members of opposition. Participation is subject to severe penalties. From here, we send in solidarity and combativity our salutations to all queers who are on the streets in Budapest today, to all comrades and allies who are supporting the event there or have traveled to empower it. Even if this anti-queer development is particularly explicit in Hungary, where it has consolidated itself for years, it is by no means limited to there. All over the world, hostility towards LGBTQ people is on the agenda and we observe violent persecu- tion on queers in Russia, in the USA, in Italy, in Great Britain, but also here, where the government could just as well be seen as a who’s who of German queer hate propaganda. In 64 countries, homosexuality is a criminal offense, in some cases punishable by death. We are experiencing an aggressive wave of trans hostility. We remember Malte, who was beaten to death on the fringes of a Pride parade, we remember Ella, who set herself on fire on Alexanderplatz in Berlin and took her own life. We remember Chloé, who was sentenced to 12 years in a men’s prison as a trans wom- an a few weeks ago after a shamelessly racist and trans-hostile Indizienprozess, a German type of circumstantial trial that allows a speculative condemnation to be pronounced despite the absence of witness testimony or a confession. We call on all those present to organize solidarity! There is something absolute about prison walls; we often feel powerless in the face of the repressive authorities. And that is exactly how they ful- fill their function. We have to keep reminding ourselves that we are active subjects. That we help shape our own history, that we are not at the mercy of an abstract power. And we must not leave Maja or any other friend or comrade who cannot escape this system alone. But what can we do concretely? We are here and we are fighting for our rights! Talk about it with your friends, share information about it online, do not let these issues be forgot- ten! Take to the streets, reclaim the authority of interpretation and the discourse. We are heading towards an even more repressive and authoritarian state than we already have, which is why organizing ourselves politically is becoming increasingly important! Seek out the left-wing, progressive groups in Stuttgart, organize yourselves queer and anti-fascist, let’s build a strong, anti-capitalist, left-wing movement! And take to the streets with us! Take every opportunity to make your anger about the situation public and build up political pressure. Until Maja is back here, until Maja is free again! Let’s find each other, be there for each other, organize solidarity and build a counter-power that can neither be ignored nor locked away! We would like to take this opportunity to express our solidarity with our comrade Nico, who is still in prison here. We express our solidarity with the other defendants in the Budapest complex, to Clara, Emmy, Nele, Luca, Paul, Paula, Tobi, Moritz, Johann and Zaid, who, like Maja, is particularly threatened with deportation to Hungary. We express our solidarity with all antifas who are being criminalized and dragged to court! Free Maja, free all Antifas! criticalpridestuttgart.de