She says she is “touched” “as a citizen” by the political situation. The captain of the Blue handball team, Estelle Nze Minko, calls for “fighting the far right”, citing her experience over the past eight years in Viktor Orban’s Hungary. “I know that we talk a lot about the fact that athletes do not necessarily have their place in the political debate but I think that there is a moment when silence is not an option.”
A committed sportswoman, who notably protested the taboo of rules in sport in 2020, Nze Minko says she is “touched by the situation which is critical, dangerous”. “I’m frustrated, angry, it adds tension, pressure at least for me,” she adds.
In Austria to have an abortion
“I would like to be able to tell everyone, especially young people, that it is important to go and vote. I understand that they may feel left out, but I want them to be actors, to understand that they have a role to play, that every voice counts,” explains the Olympic champion with 165 selections who has been evolving since 2016 in Hungary, a country led by nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
“This is why I allow myself to say that we absolutely must fight against the extreme right because I have real examples of life in Hungary for eight years,” she continues, citing in particular a personal event that she had never spoken publicly before because “it’s a bit private.”
“I wouldn’t wish this to happen to anyone.”
“A few years ago I wanted to have an abortion and abortion is very complicated in Hungary. It is authorized but very complex and therefore for my safety and respect for my body, to have dignified and respectful conditions, I had to cross the border and go to do it in Austria,” she says. “So, when I speak, I know what I am talking about and that is why I do not wish that to happen to anyone,” continued Estelle Nze Minko, who wants to “mobilize for a democratic, freer, more egalitarian society , more sustainable, fairer.
If the leader of the National Rally Jordan Bardella defended last week “the fundamental right to dispose of one’s body”, recalling that Marine Le Pen voted for the inclusion of abortion in the Constitution, the RN MEPs did not did not support a resolution in the spring to introduce the right to abortion into the charter of fundamental rights of the European Union.
