Little Attention Given to Persecution of Gypsies

by Katalin Karcagi

ERRC says that international authorities, particularly the KFOR, have reacted inadequately to abuses of Roma and to the evident urgent need for international protection of the Roma in Kosovo.]

(IPS) BUDAPEST -- There is nothing new about the plight of gypsy minorities in Hungary and the Czech Republic: they are as excluded as they have always been. Nobody has ever fought a war for them, but many would like to fight one against them.

Hungary and the Czech Republic, both applying for European Union membership, have been repeatedly criticized by the European Commission because of the handling of their gypsy minorities. Lurking intolerance toward Romanies is omnipresent in both societies and discrimination is still part of everyday life.

A 13-year old gypsy boy was recently stabbed to death in God, 30 kilometers north of the Hungarian capital days ago. Before dying, he named the two murderers who first robbed and then brutally killed him. They are believed to be skinheads.

During a TV news program, a viewer phoned in to say he did not like Gypsies at all, but that, after hearing about this terrible murder he would take their side.

Vicious actions against Hungary's 500,000-strong gypsy community, the fastest growing group in the country, are not an exception.

In a recent report, the United Nations Committee Against Torture expressed disapproval of the Hungarian police's behavior. "Suspects are often rudely treated even assaulted and the share of gypsies among them and among the convicts is too high," says the report.

But Hungary's Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Peter Naray, disagrees. "The Romanies' situation is not a criminal but an economic and sociological question," he says.

At the same time, he admits that among people committing crimes, Romanies are well ahead of their population share: while they constitute some five percent of Hungary's population, they make up for 40 percent of all convicted thieves.

Unemployment among gypsies is 60-80 percent, in some areas reaching even 100 percent, compared to a national average of 10.4 percent. Their poor living conditions have been worsened by Hungary's transition to a market economy since 1990.

In the town of Homrogd, the gypsy minority council received a death-threatening letter from "Hungary's Skinhead Movement" and the "Association for a Homrogd cleared from Romanies."

Although Aladar Hirvath, president of the Romany Civic Rights Foundation, concluded that most of Homrogod's residents repudiated the threats, he was very critical of the police's slowness in investigating the case.

"Schooling doesn't provide equal chances for gypsy children either," says Jeno Kaltenbach, Hungary's Ombudsman for minorities issues.

He points to statistics stating that their chances to get good education are 1:15 compared to ethnic Hungarian children.

Until now, no solution has been found to their de facto segregation. In some regions, gypsy children are segregated to special areas within schools, while in others they are kept out of schools altogether.

Integration programs are underfunded, Kaltenbach says, and have proven ineffective so far.

Other experts have also voiced discontent over the job done by the Agency for National and Ethnic Minorities. This month, a Romany Interministerial Committee was due to be set up, to watch the implementation of the Government's programmes aiming at improving the gypsies' social situation.

But a growing number of Romanies seem to have lost their patience.

Following the example of their Czech peers, many Hungarian gypsies are now heading for Canada, where they believe life conditions and tolerance are higher than here.

Czech TV documentaries have presented a seducing image of Canada's Gypsy immigrants, prompting hundreds among the country's 300,000 gypsies to fly over the Atlantic and apply for political asylum in Canada.

As a result of the sudden influx, Canadian authorities have reintroduced visa requirements for Czech citizens. Another stream of Czech and Slovak gypsies tried to enter Great Britain. All of them contended to be victims of racial discrimination and applied for refugee status.

Upset by the wave of emigrants, Czech authorities, politicians, and historians began to examine the problems of gypsy communities.

Historian Emanuel Mandler traces the roots of anti-Romany sentiments back to the xenophobic state policy of the first Republic of Czechoslovakia. The troubles are also caused by the widespread view that gypsies in the Czech Republic, mostly of Slovak origin, belong to a foreign race.

It is a common notion that the only way to deal effectively with the problem is to assimilate gypsies into the Czech culture, instead of integrating them as a different cultural trait within society, says Mandler.

One reason why politicians are starting to give more attention to the gypsies' plight is that the settlement of racial, religious and ethnic problems are a precondition for European Union membership, to which both Budapest and Prague are applying.

Apart from criticizing some aspects of the market liberalization process and the restructuring of the state bureaucracy, EU reports have also pointed an accusing finger to the situation of gypsies within Czech society.

A Czech mayor, for example, proposed that the town council build a wall around a gypsy living compound, which created outrage among many Czechs who were suddenly reminded of the ghettos built by occupying German forces during World War II.

As in Budapest, the government in Prague decided also to set up an interministerial committee to deal with Romanies' affairs.

Various departments, as well as Romany organizations, are represented in this advisory body.

A recent incident, however, proves that despite the efforts, a lot more needs to be done to alleviate ethnic tension.

The National Congress of Romany urged European Romanies to boycott Czech pork because the Czech government refused to close down a pig farm on the grounds of a former concentration camp in Lety.

The plant was built in 1995 with government loans, on a site where 327 Gypsies killed by the Germans are buried.

The Czech government decided last month on the allocation of one million crowns ($28,300) to install a memorial close to Lety, but rejected a human rights official's proposal to close down the plant.

In the Lety concentration camp established in 1940, mostly Czech gypsies were held captured from August 1942 on. When the camp was closed, toward the end of the war, the surviving captives were deported to Auschwitz, in Poland.

A leading Czech meat processing company acquired the land in 1995 and the plant was built amid protests from the survivors and their families.

The government says it can't afford to buy the property back, while the gypsy community is hoping that the boycott call, based on humanitarian grounds, proves to be even costlier. Of course, if media cares enough to report on it and western human rights organizations support it.