In many European countries, including Hungary, the Roma (gypsy) communities were targets of social violence in 2008, and the incident rate was more frequent and took more casualties then in the previous years – concludes the U.S. Department of Foreign Affairs’ Human Rights Report.
The only mention of Hungary in the report concerns the increasing violation against gypsies. Another salient point in the report is the increasing anti-Semitic aggression and pronouncements in many European countries.
According to the report, extreme nationalist groups in Hungary are more focused on the attacks of gypsies and other dark skinned groups; the violence and other aggressive behavior resulted in four deaths and many serious injuries in 2008. The report, which concludes with 2008, does not have records of the incidents that occurred in the first two months of 2009, which included Neo-Nazi groups repeatedly burning down the houses of gypsy families, and shooting at them, as they attempted to escape the flames. On February 23, a five-year-old boy and his father died of gunshot wounds while trying to escape from the fire. The other family members are in critical condition.
There is continued discrimination of gypsies in education, housing programs, employment and social programs. Brutal treatment of homosexuals is also a big problem.
According to the report, some problems not only persist but actually got worse in the last couple of years. The already documented excessive abuse by the police of gypsies suspected of crime has also gotten worse. The report makes mention of the national media’s penchant to favor the government party, look benignly at current violence, and promoting propaganda against the ethnic and religious minorities by extreme nationalists. Corruption within the government and by public officials is an issue that continues to plague the country. The social and sexual abuse of women and children, along with human trafficking, are huge human rights violations.
The report provides detailed information about newspapers, like Magyar Hirlap, Magyar Demokrata, and Magyar Forum, on anti-Semitic articles published and that are still being published by them; it also describes Nazi websites, which are run publicly by nationalist groups in Hungary, such as the Magyar Garda, an “extreme nationalist para-military group,” which sends aggressive and threatening verbal messages to gypsies, calling them “gypsy-criminals” and accusing them of endangering the public safety.
The Romas organized a public rally to protest the intolerance and violent treatment of gypsies.
The Council of Europe: Hungary excludes its gypsy communities
The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) of the Council of Europe, which monitors all 47 countries in the European Union and is located in Strasbourg, also completed a report on Hungary. Based on its findings, the ECRI demands that Hungary pass stricter legislation to protect [human rights] and to observe existing laws. The Hungarian educational system is still segregated, the refugees don’t get enough help, and freedom of speech is seriously abused.
The ECRI report states that although Hungarian laws are better now than in 2004, they still are not strict enough, and the public does not observe them. The same problems have persisted since 2004, in addition to a rise in nationalist sentiment and chauvinism.
The notion of freedom of speech is seriously distorted in Hungary, making it very difficult to apprehend people who publish, write and preach hatred of gypsies and anti-Semitism.
ECRI demands that Hungary pass laws to restrain the atrocity campaign on the internet of hate toward gypsies and colored minorities. Although not explicitly stated, this demand addresses the need to restrain the para-military nationalist Magyar Garda.
The report suggests that Hungary take more seriously the investigation on matters dealing with racial attacks. For that to happen, the report implies, Hungary must offer vocational trainings for the police forces, attorneys, prosecutors and judges. It also warns congressmen to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and to come up with legislation to allow for minorities to represent themselves in congress – something previously discussed and which produced no results, when the Hungarian Parliament failed to make a constitutional amendment constitutional.
The hate toward gypsies is spreading so fast in Hungary that ECRI hopes to see a comprehensive national campaign against racism that would reach from small villages to big cities.
The report details school segregation, which it views as having improved slightly in the last couple of years, but the school system, in general, gets bad ratings. Segregation of gypsy children is forbidden by the law, but many local authorities circumvent it. ECRI wants more serious supervision on this area. The report talks about public, private and voluntary schools that unofficially weed out Roma kids with high tuition fees and preliminary examinations.
ECRI states there has been an improvement in special aid schools, where many gypsy students have been sent over the past decades even if they didn’t have any mental problems, since this tendency was revealed.
The ECRI suggests close monitoring and supervision of the foster care system where gypsy kids are over represented. Children of families who are evicted go into foster care, no matter what, since authorities consider them at-risk because of the families’ precarious finances. In turn, a large percent of foster kids are declared as special aid kids. The report is very critical of Hungarian schools that don’t want to accept refugee children, and of the public education system, which does not offer adequate instruction to help these children learn the Hungarian language properly.
ECRI recommends regular check ups on employers and health care institutes that discriminate against gypsies – it found the exclusion of Romas from the labor market or proper health care to be “typical.” The report suggests the formation of educational programs to train gypsies to work in the health care system as a means of integrating them into mainstream Hungarian society and to promote Romani self-esteem. Furthermore, it states that since Hungary has an existing legal system, it can be accessed to eliminate discrimination of gypsies.
