Gov’t faces its toughest challenge with chilling ethnic tensions in the countryside
By Richard Field
BUDAPEST TIMES: On 1 July 1863 in a remote corner of Pennsylvania scouting parties of two great armies exchanged fire in a skirmish that became the Battle of Gettysburg, the turning point in the battle for the heart and soul of 19th-century America known as the Civil War. At issue was whether slavery should continue to be tolerated. A century later another battle for the hearts and minds of Americans was fought in Selma, Alabama and towns throughout the American South. This time the issue was whether 100 years after their emancipation African-Americans should remain second-class citizens or be permitted to enjoy the same civil rights as whites.
The siege of Gyöngyöspata
A similar battle for the hearts and minds of Hungarians is being fought in towns like Gyöngyöspata (population 2,800) where three weeks ago between 300 and 800 paramilitaries laid siege to a poor neighborhood that is home to 115 Roma families including 200 children. At the behest of Jobbik chairman Gábor Vona, the so-called Civic Guard for a Better FutureAssociation (Szebb Jõvõért Polgárõr Egyesület), one of several successor organizations to the officially banned Hungarian Guard (Magyar Gárda), occupied the town to protect its non-Roma inhabitants from “gypsy terror”.
Accompanying the black-clad vigilantes were skinhead auxiliaries who terrorized Gyöngyöspata’s Roma inhabitants with whips (bottom, second photo) and pit bulls while the “civil guard” formed a human cordon sanitaire sealing off the Roma quarter from the rest of the town. According to eyewitness reports, the local police looked on while guardsmen intimidated Roma women and children on their way to and from school and spat on members of parliament who dared crossed the siege lines to meet local Roma leaders.
The siege lasted for two and a half weeks. During this time most Roma families, fearing for their lives and the lives of their children, confined themselves to the relative safety of their homes.
Roma ghetto
According to extreme-right-wing publication Barikád, owned by leading Jobbik politicians Gábor Vona and Csanád Szegedi and edited by Jobbik politician Sándor Pörzse, the casus belli for this unprecedented action was the suicide of an elderly Gyöngyöspata resident who was allegedly distressed by the prospect of a Roma family moving into his neighbourhood. The family was one of three whose homes had been badly damaged during last year’s flooding of the stream along whose banks the Roma quarter is situated.
Exaggerated claims of “gypsy crime” not withstanding, the actual “crime” for which Gyöngyöspata’s Roma were being punished was one of its households having the temerity to purchase a house on higher ground outside the Roma ghetto with funds provided by the Hungarian Red Cross, allocated for this purpose.
Playing the crime card
Once again Vona and his fellow right-wing ideologues justify the unjustifiable by claimingthat Gyöngyöspata suffered from an inordinate amount of “gypsy crime.” The fact that local law enforcement officials confirm crime is no higher here than elsewhere is an inconvenient truth conveniently discounted by Vona and his coconspirators, having long ago mastered the art of distorting facts and manipulating legitimate public concerns for their own selfish political purposes.
A week ago I visited the Roma quarter of Gyöngyöspata on foot. I was twice stopped bypolice and asked to show identification. As I was reviewing the two-page real estate sales agreement that caused such a stir a police cruiser pulled up. Four policemen got out and signaled to a 15-year-old Roma youth to step away from the crowd of people standing on the pavement around me, whereupon the four policemen surrounded and proceeded to interrogate him.
His “crime” was the innocent prank of crossing over the Gyöngyöspata stream on a pipe instead of a nearby bridge. As they were leaving, one of the policemen told me he and his colleagues had acted out of concern for the safety of the youth. To say that he was being facetious is a gross understatement. It is clear to me that local police are accessories to the persecution of Gyöngyöspata’s Roma.
Were this to happen in the United States the police officers in question would be reprimande and/or suspended from duty pending a full investigation. However, because this is Hungary where police are often said to commit acts of violence against Roma, victims of police harassment know to keep their mouths shut.
Vona’s vicious publicity stunt was more than a cowardly, unprovoked attack on a defenseless community. It was an attack on the Hungarian Red Cross and any NGO or individual seeking to improve the plight of Hungary’s impoverished Roma. Vona’s message is clear: Jobbik (the so called Movement for a Better Hungary he founded) will frustrate any attempt to help Roma by laying siege to their communities and publicly vilifying anyone coming to their assistance.
State indirectly funding terror
By now it should be perfectly obvious that Vona and his companions are actively directing and financing the various successor organisations to the banned Hungarian Guard. They are doing so with over HUF 448 million (EUR 1.66 million) of state funds Jobbik receives each year as a political party occupying 12 per cent of the seats in parliament, having received 17 per cent of the popular vote in last year’s elections.
If Jobbik politicians and their supporters can commit such outrageous acts with impunity it is because Jobbik sympathisers fill the ranks of local police forces. It is also because national political and civic leaders have inexcusably refused to denounce Jobbik rhetoric and strong-arm tactics reminiscent of the 1930s national socialist movements on which the Movement for a Better Hungary is modeled. Despite legislation prohibiting hate crime and hate speech, police are reluctant to investigate instances and prosecutors are reluctant to indict people.
Less talk, more action
In Gyöngyöspata a line was crossed with frightening implications for national, ethnic and religious minorities. It is no longer sufficient for decent Hungarians to limit their actions to expressions of grave concern. If Hungary is to avoid becoming a pariah among civilized nations the Hungarian people must send a clear message to their political leaders here and now that hate crime, hate speech, neo-fascist political movements and paramilitary organizations are not to be tolerated.
Ban Jobbik and other hate groups
The government should start by banning the Jobbik party and all affiliated paramilitary organizations complicit in the egregious violation of the human rights and civil liberties of Gyöngyöspata’s Roma inhabitants. It should ban Barikád, www.kuruc.info and other print and on-line media advocating the persecution of any national, ethnic or religious minorities.
It should revise hate-crime legislation so as to clearly outlaw attacks on members of communities regardless of whether this involves incitement to physical violence. And it should vigorously prosecute any and all individuals, including government and law-enforcement officials, violating the civil liberties or human rights of any citizen. Parliament should immediately lift the immunity of Vona and other Jobbik politicians from prosecution for such crimes.
But this is not enough. It is time for Hungarian civil society to redress the cause lying at the root of both Roma social exclusion and right-wing extremism: rural poverty.
Sowing seeds of hope
Recently the American House Foundation and the Hungarian Red Cross provided plant seed to 8,000 families in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén and Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok counties. Agricultural experts and Red Cross volunteers are teaching thousands of impoverished families how to garden. If this program yields the hoped-for results it will pave the way for the Hungarian Red Cross to launch a national rural development program in 2012.
Within the framework of this program the US foundation Americans for Hungarians has offered to provide 20,000 baby chicks which hopefully will be the first step in reintroducing livestock in parts of the country where animal husbandry has all but vanished.
Lifting up the poor
While a small step in the right direction, this is clearly not enough. A concerted effort must be made to feed, clothe and educate an estimated 300,000 children who are living in dire poverty, including growing numbers of non-Roma children. (The biggest lie told to the Hungarian people is that the poor deserve their fate because they are all Roma.)
Enlightened self- interest
As always education is crucial and should focus on instilling practical 21st-century work skills such as computer programming, IT management, nursing and other fields where there is a shortage of qualified personnel. The numerous technology and pharmaceutical companies can and must play a more active role in extending the benefits of practical education and technical skills training to the countryside. Furthermore it is in their own interest that they do so as more and more computer and scientifically literate Hungarians take jobs abroad. New endowments need to be set up that will grant thousands of full and partial scholarships making it possible for promising youth from impoverished rural areas to attend academic high schools and universities.
Work, not welfare
But even that is not enough. Civil society must pool its resources to create jobs in rural communities such as Gyöngyöspata. Every able-bodied man I met there told me the same thing – they want jobs, not welfare. Such jobs could include public work to raise and reinforce river banks and clear some 50,000 kilometres in storm water drainage ditches (see ‘It never rains but it pours’, 21 March, The Budapest Times), as well as traditional cottage industries such as basket weaving or embroidery whose proprietors should be taught how to market their products globally on eBay and other websites.
The government should make state-owned agricultural land and grants available to new agricultural cooperatives specializing in the cultivation of labor-intensive crops. Supermarket chains must be persuaded to set aside shelf and refrigerator space for Hungarian fruits, vegetables and meat products so that consumers wishing to purchase quality Hungarian products can do so.
No time to lose
Left to their own devices neither the government nor the private sector can be expected to create the hundreds of thousands of rural jobs over the next two or three years required to avert wide-scale civil unrest.
The battle lines are drawn. At stake is whether Hungary will take its rightful place among the enlightened, prosperous nations or whether it will descend into madness and chaos as it did 70 years ago to the inestimable harm of its citizenry. There can be no more sitting on the fence hoping the next government will be less feckless than the previous one.
To the thousands of investors and companies active in the country I say that if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem. Those prepared to do the right thing and give something back to Hungary in the form of material or financial aid, skills training or job creation are encouraged to contact me or any other nongovernment organization actively fighting the war on poverty and social exclusion.
On Thursday afternoon the Hungarian Red Cross delivered nearly two tons of food, washing powder and diapers to the persecuted Roma families. Now it is your turn to do something about rural poverty, social exclusion, and the rise of political extremism.
– The author is founder and chairman of the American House Foundation, a US-registered private foundation that is working with the Hungarian Red Cross and other Hungarian non-government organizations on issues of poverty, homelessness and social exclusion.
EDITOR: The author also is a graduate of McCaskey High School.
(Picture: Gyöngyöspata, Hungary. Right-wing vigilanties stand guard in the Roma ghetto.)
