“I do not want to put my health at further risk — because I feel that if I do not stop now, it will soon be too late,” the activist, known as Maja T., said in the statement published by the Budapest Antifascist Solidarity Committee (BASC).

Maja T., who identifies as non-binary, went on trial in February over four counts of attempted assault against far-right activists during a rally in Budapest in 2023.

The activist was handed over to Hungary by Germany last summer — a decision that was severely criticised by the German constitutional court.

The judges said the extradition order had failed to take account of potentially dangerous prison conditions in Hungary, especially for LGBTQ people.

“I have been on hunger strike since June 5… in protest against my unlawful and unjustified extradition from Germany to Hungary a year ago,” Maja T. said.

The activist also wanted to raise awareness of “the repressive persecution of anti-fascists… as well as the ongoing solitary confinement and inhumane conditions in Hungarian prisons”.

Maja T. was transferred to a prison hospital some 250 kilometres from Budapest on July 1 amid “serious concerns about the stability of my health”, according to the statement.

The activist’s heart rate had dropped to below 30 beats per minute and there was a risk of cardiac arrest or organ failure, according to Germany’s MDR broadcaster.

The German foreign ministry had on Friday expressed “great concern” over Maja T.’s health.

The attacks in February 2023 happened in the days preceding the so-called annual “Day of Honour” commemoration in Budapest, where European far-right groups gather to mark a failed attempt by Nazi forces in 1945 to break out of the city during the Soviet army’s siege.

Several activists have since been prosecuted in Hungary and could face prison sentences for the attacks as nationalist premier Viktor Orban vows to clamp down on “far-left violence”.

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© Agence France-Presse