Written by Richard Field
Tuesday, 22 February 2011
From the BUDAPEST POST:
2010 was the European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion. And yet Europe’s estimated 8-10 million Roma found themselves poorer and more socially excluded than ever after the Italian and French governments demolished “illegal” Roma settlements and deported thousands of Roma in clear violation of their rights as citizens of European Union member states. A bill introduced recently in the Romanian parliament to change the official name of the Roma people to “Gypsy” so as not to confuse them with ordinary Romanians merely added insult to injury. Reinforcing prejudice and stereotypes: security for an international Roma music festival the summer before last was provided by a small army of skinheads dressed in commando-style uniforms. With two-metre fencing, being in the audience was exactly like being in a high-security prison yard.
Mutual distrust
The attitudes on the part of individual Hungarians towards the Roma ranges from paternalistic condescension to vile contempt and even murderous hatred; in 2009 a number of Roma were randomly gunned down in their homes. Even educated Hungarians generally consider the Roma lazy, unreliable and dangerous. The Roma react to such attitudes on the part of their non-Roma neighbours with a mixture of fear, mistrust, and loathing.Underlying racial stereotypes is a body of anecdotal evidence repeated ad nauseam. One hears of gangs of criminals stripping gardens of their vegetables, orchards of their fruit, workshops of their equipment, and transformers of their copper wiring; of Roma families illegally squatting in outbuildings; of chronic absenteeism from school and work; of Roma parents squandering their welfare money on cigarettes and alcohol while their children go hungry; of murderous knife-welding Roma gangs roaming the streets; and of local police too intimated to do anything about “gypsy crime.”
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