LGBTQ+ activists share their stories with DW to warn against the potential consequences should nationalist and far-right parties make their expected gains in the European elections.

Monika Magashazi is a fighter. The 52-year old trans woman lives in Hungary — a country that has been ruled by Viktor Orban’s nationalist Fidesz party since 2010.

For transgender communities, the situation “has been becoming worse and worse and, unfortunately, we are desperate today in Hungary,” she told DW. She said the government was trying to portray trans people as pedophiles and criminals, using seemingly every opportunity to discriminate against them.

Struggling with her own coming out, Magashazi even attempted to take her own life. “I reached a point when I had to decide on how to live on,” she said. Thinking about her children saved her life.

“I said I will keep myself alive and try to live as a transgender woman and the father of my children — or the second attempt will be successful, and I’m going to be dead. And in that case, my children would miss their father,” she said.