Roma protest loaded survey question on "gypsy crime"

By MTI

The head of the National Roma Council has protested against a survey published on Wednesday which had juxtaposed the words "gypsy" and "crime" in a question.

Orban Kolompar slammed Nezopont Institute's survey, which found that 91 percent of those asked said they thought "gypsy crime" was a real issue. Kolompar said that the term was unacceptable and that the question was an incitement of hatred against the Roma minority.

Agoston Samuel Mraz, who directed Nezopont's survey in question, told MTI that his institute had applied the phrase because it was used both in public discourse and in sociology.

He noted that 77 percent of respondents in the survey thought Roma people were more inclined to commit crimes than others. "Nezopont thinks that reducing such a high level of prejudice is an urgent public responsibility," he said.

The slogan "gypsy crime" was used with increased frequency by far-right groups after a driver, whose car hit a Roma girl but did not hurt her, was lynched by the girl's family members in October 2006.

Following the incident, public dignitaries, politicians, criminal experts and Roma officials joined in protest against using the derogatory term and against efforts to stigmatise the Roma community.

Extremist group holds anti-crime rally in Hugnary, critics call it an attack on Gypsies

2008-01-18 21:22:05 -

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) - A small extremist group rallied Friday in the Hungarian capital to protest what it said was a rising crime rate, but which critics said was a veiled attack on the country's Gypsies.

Some 50 members of the Hungarian Guard and around 200 supporters attended the short, torch-lit march to a high school near where an 18-year-old student was attacked last week by a 17-year-old classmate described in Hungarian media as a Gypsy. The victim reportedly suffered a skull fracture and died shortly after returning home.

The Guard was formed last year and has about 700 members. Its uniform has elements which resemble those used by the Arrow Cross, a pro-Nazi, World War II militia.
Budapest prosecutors have asked a local court to disband the Guard because of legal irregularities.

President Laszlo Solyom last month refused to meet with the group, describing an earlier rally as «immensely damaging,» saying they created an atmosphere which made it more difficult for Gypsies _ or Roma _ to integrate into Hungarian society.

On Friday, a Guard's official said the anti-crime rally wanted to call attention to «real problems in society ... for which the current political elite is responsible.

«We don't aim to solve these problems by violent means and we don't want to be police, that is a duty of the state,» Istvan Dosa said. «But there is an ethnic bomb ticking in the country which can explode at any time.

After Dosa's speech, a woman read out a list of crimes committed in Hungary in the past months _ at least some of which are known to have involved Roma. Some Guard supporters shouted «Gypsy criminals» and «Gypsy crimes» after every description _ even though the reader never used those words herself.

There are an estimated 600,000-800,000 Roma among Hungary's population of 10 million. They are among the poorest and least educated citizens. While there are no official statistics, U.N. Habitat, a humanitarian agency, estimated that up to 60 percent of male inmates in Hungarian prisons are Roma.

Budapest Mayor Gabor Demszky said the Guard's protest was actually aimed at «intimidating the Roma living in Budapest «(Friday's) act is aimed against democratic values, human rights, tolerance and the religious and ethnic minorities until now living peacefully in Budapest,» Demszky said in a statement ahead of the march.

Hungary: Gypsy school segregation persists

Posted : Fri, 04 Jan 2008 16:21:11 GMT
Author : World News Editor

BUDAPEST, Hungary, Jan. 4 Despite government efforts to eradicate it, separation of Gypsies in school classrooms in Hungary appears as a deep-rooted problem difficult to resolve.

The Hungarian government has invested heavily in education but some sociologists argue that extra money for schools in disadvantaged regions could be blamed for the enduring problem of the Romany, or Gypsy, segregation, the Hungarian news agency MTI reported Friday.

State-run schools receiving extra funding through the government's integration program are not popular with middle-class parents, who often withdraw their children to send them to better schools, the Hungarian national daily Nepszabadsag said.

The parents' choice leaves those schools with a majority of Gypsies and the program, aimed at integrating disadvantaged children with their "mainstream peers" actually collapses, the newspaper said.

Attila Z. Papp, a researcher of the Educational Survey Council, said a local town mayor told him that segregation perhaps was the only solution.

Gabor Daroczi, a former government commissioner for Romany integration, said integration would stand a chance if people supported the program. But, it is the sad truth that a majority of the society supports segregation, Nepszabadsag reported.

Copyright 2008 by UPI

Hungary's chief justice defends Gypsies

BUDAPEST, Hungary, Dec. 12 Hungary's chief justice has asked lawmakers to work out more efficient laws to safeguard the dignity of the Gypsy, or Romany, community.

Zoltan Lomnici, president of the Hungarian Supreme Court in Budapest Wednesday denounced a recent march by a far-right paramilitary organization aimed at intimidating the Gypsy minority in the country, the Hungarian news agency MTI reported.

Lomnici, responding to a letter by Erno Kallai, the minority ombudsman, said any discrimination by race, religion or gender is unconstitutional and unacceptable.

Some 300 members of the neo-Nazi Hungarian Guard, sporting black dress and carrying red-and-white striped banners, in a hate showing move Sunday marched through a predominantly Gypsy village outside Budapest.

Kallai's letter appealed to politicians and public officials to take stand on the Sunday neo-Nazi march.

Lomnici reiterated Hungary needed amended laws that would easily cope with any actions displaying hatred and threats towards Gypsies and other national minorities.

He confirmed he had already sent proposals relating to his ideas to the parliament's constitutional and judicial committees.

Gypsy child 27 times more likely to be in 'special' school

Written by Sean Sampson
Monday, 19 November 2007

Czech separate schooling illegal

Gypsy children in the Czech Republic must be taught in mainstream schools and not separately, the European Court of Human Rights decided last week.

The Strasbourg-based court found that the Czech authorities had discriminated against 18 Roma children in Ostrava (eastern Czech Republic) by educating them in schools for children with learning difficulties irrespective of their level of intelligence.

Discriminatory argument wins

Lawyers acting for the Roma litigants successfully argued that the practice of separate schooling was in violation of article 14 of the European Convention of Human Rights, which bans discrimination.

“The court has made clear that racial discrimination has no place in 21st century Europe,” said James A. Goldston, counsel for the plaintiffs and executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative.

“Roma children must have the same access to quality education as everyone else,” he added.


Cosmetic changes won’t do

Although the Czech Republic has reformed its education system since the Roma first complained, there is widespread suspicion that the changes are merely cosmetic and that the practice continues with renamed schools. In its judgement the court noted that the practice is widespread in other European countries.

The court ordered the Czech government to pay each of the successful litigants EUR 4,000 in damages.

Gypsy children are 27 times more likely than other Czech citizens to end up being educated in a special school, according the European Roma Rights Centre. According to Viktória Móhácsi, an MEP, 60% of Roma children in Hungary are in segregated schooling.

Hungarian Gypsy authority meeting ends in disarray

By: Hungary Around the Clock
2007-03-14 10:21:00

Lungo Drom chairman Flórián Farkas vowed to take legal action on Tuesday after the inaugural session of the National Gypsy Authority degenerated into a debacle, prompting Lungo Drom representatives to walk out of the meeting held at Duna Palota.

The storm erupted when Lungo Drom representative János Kozák was elected National Gypsy Authority leader, rather than the expected Farkas, after the 25-strong Forum of Hungarian Gypsy Organisations nominated the former.

The meeting was adjourned and Lungo Drom deputies walked out of the hall. Forum officials and two Lungo Drom members continued proceedings and elected Kozák. Outgoing chairman Orbán Kolompár said "Farkas left because he could not accept someone else being nominated as chairman."

Farkas threatened to take legal action and said he expects the public administrative office to void the decisions made at the meeting.

Gypsy authority urging hate speech law

Budapest, February 1 (MTI) - Hungary's National Gypsy Authority (OCO) on Thursday urged parliament to renew its attempts to pass legislation against hate speech, the authority's chairman Orban Kolompar told reporters.

There has been an increased number of verbal attacks against the Roma minority in recent months, said Kolompar. Legislation is therefore needed to class hate speech as a crime, he insisted.

Early last year, the Constitutional Court nullified a law against hate speech adopted by Parliament, finding it unconstitutional. The rejected law would have expanded the scope of punishable acts, by inserting the phrase "incitement to hatred" to replace "instigation" in the Penal Code.

Kolompar argued that it was not enough to say that "the majority of people reject statements inciting hatred". Legal means are also needed against people, groups, organisations or parties that made openly offensive, racist remarks, he said.

OCO calls on the main opposition Fidesz party and allied Roma organisation Lungo Drom to distance themselves from extreme right organisations, such as Jobbik, which made provocative statements last week suggesting a high ratio of criminal activities committed by members of the Roma community, OCO Spokesman Janos Bogdan, Jr. said.