A month ago a Békés county judge ruled that public prosecutors had failed to prove their case against the so-called Civil Guard Association for a Better Future (Szebb Jövõért Polgárõr Egyesület). This paramilitary organization associated with Hungary’s radical right wing Jobbik Party was primarily responsible for last year’s anti-Roma disturbances in Gyöngyöspata and other northern Hungarian settlements with substantial Roma populations.
Within a week of the court refusing to disband the Civil Guard Association its members converged on the Western Hungarian town of Devecser, site of 2010’s Red Sludge disaster. Disingenuous claims of “legitimate self-defense” notwithstanding, the real purpose of the demonstration was to exploit anti-Roma sentiment arising from the fact that a number of Roma families whose homes had been destroyed had been resettled in other parts of the town traditionally reserved for non-Roma. According to eye-witness accounts the demonstration quickly turned violent.
Last week the Civil Guard Association organized a similar demonstration in the Central Hungarian City of Ceglėd.
The resumption of paramilitary operations targeting Roma communities after a year’s hiatus following last May’s extraordinary modification to the criminal code expressly banning such activities constitutes a serious threat to the rule of law and Democracy itself.
That the Jobbik party continues to cooperate with, if not actively direct, the Civil Guard Association is abundantly clear. In a statement dated August 20th posted on its website Jobbik vice-Chairman and parliamentarian János Volner, whose physical resemblance to Adolf Hitler is nothing short of chilling, thanked “all those feeling responsibility for their fellow countrymen for yesterday’s demontration of solidarity in Ceglėd.” That Vice-Chairman Volner personally attended the anti-Roma demonatration in Ceglėd and saw fit to take photographs and video causes one to question his subsequent claim that the action was “spontaneous” and not instigated by Jobbik with the goal of fomenting anti-Roma sentiment for political gain,
Politically motivated demonstrations and other disturbances targeting minority communities and members of the “left-liberal” press reminiscent of those promulgated by Mussolini’s facists and Hitler’s Nazis in the 1920s and 1930s are likely to increase in frequency and intensity in the run up to parliamentary elections in 2014.
