Business and finance
ROBERT CSORBA grabbed his four year old son Robika and ran for his life when the Molotov cocktail hit their home. They did not get far: both were shot dead as soon as they stepped outside. A Budapest court this week sentenced three far-right extremists to life imprisonment without parole for murdering the Csorbas and four other members of Hungary’s Roma minority in a series of attacks between 2008 and 2009. A fourth member of the group received thirteen years. The four men had admitted their involvement, but had denied murder. They are expected to appeal.
The killings in north and eastern Hungary sent a wave of terror through Hungary’s Roma community, which makes up around 8% of the country’s ten million population. The killers had operated freely for around fourteen months. The police investigation was plagued by incompetence and, say Roma activists, a lack of drive to catch the killers. Only with the arrival of FBI profilers was the case eventually solved.
Laszlo Miszori, the judge, said that the killers regarded themselves as vigilantes, bringing order to lawless communities. The violence has abated in Hungary but is rising in the neighbouring Czech Republic. Amnesty International and the European Roma Rights Centre have called on the Czech authorities to protect Roma communities after repeated riots erupted this summer in Ceske Budejovice. The clashes between Roma and non-Roma were egged on by increasingly confident neo-Nazi groups. In Slovakia several local authorities have erected walls to separate Roma communities from their neighbours, including in Kosice, Slovakia’s second largest city, which is a European Capital of Culture this year.
This month marked the anniversary of the Roma Holocaust, known as the "Poraymus" or "Devouring". Decades later, Roma are still more likely to live in poverty, be unemployed and suffer from poor health. Many live in shanty towns on the edge of towns and villages, eking out a living in one-room shacks that lack electricity, water or sewage connections, in conditions that are more often seen in the developing world than modern European democracies. They suffer widespread discrimination and even hatred. The reasons are deep, complex and will likely take decades to ameliorate.
The deterioration started after the collapse of Communism in 1990, but is rooted in centuries of social exclusion. Many of the Roma were employed in state-owned factories or large industrial concerns that were sold off or shut down. Some have not worked since. Lacking advanced education and employment skills, they often remain marginalised and sink into long term unemployment, which breeds a cycle of poverty, welfare dependence and, sometimes, petty crime.
Mentalities on both sides are frozen from the pre-war era, and the debate about how to improve the Romas’ conditions is frequently hamstrung by political correctness. The former Soviet bloc did not experience the social revolutions of the 1960s that changed attitudes towards minorities in the west and made racism socially unacceptable. It is commonplace across the region to hear even educated people make racist slurs against Roma, often to the general approval of their peers. An extreme-right website in Hungary, with a section devoted to "Gypsy crime", recently had more than 60,000 Facebook "likes", many of them from young, educated and employed people, until Facebook closed down its fan page.
At the same time, Roma communities struggle to come to terms with modernity. Roma society is often clannish and atomised, with no recognisable leaders to negotiate with outside authorities. Many poor Roma are exploited by thuggish money-lenders inside their own community, who hand out cash at enormous rates, so that the loans can never be repaid. The moneylenders then demand families’ welfare payments as soon as they arrive. Talented youngsters are often not encouraged to study, but are instead pressurised to marry young and have numerous children, which furthers the cycle of welfare dependence.
Outsiders are often regarded with deep suspicion, referred as to gadje, meaning non-Roma, with sometimes tragic consequences. In 2006 Lajos Szogi, a schoolteacher, was driving through Olaszliszka, a village in northern Hungary, when his car brushed against a Roma girl. She was not hurt, but Mr Szogi was dragged from his car and beaten to death by a mob in front of his daughters.
Hungary sees itself as a trailblazer in integrating the Roma. In April 2011 the government marked its six-month presidency of the EU by launching a grandiose continent-wide Roma strategy. The government regards the Roma minority as a valuable human resource, and not a problem to be solved, say officials. The Roma must be educated, integrated and employed so they can contribute to society. The European Commission has praised the ongoing dialogue between the government and local authorities about best practices, says Budapest proudly.
Roma activists differ. They say the Hungarian government, like its neighbours, merely pays lip-service to integration. Roma children are frequently classified as mentally handicapped, even if they are not. About half of Roma children are segregated, and receive a sub-standard education, says Andras Ujlaky, of the Chance for Children Foundation, a campaigning group which has ongoing legal actions against several local authorities. Court rulings against desegregation are not enforced. Yet in Hodmezovasarhely, a city in southern Hungary, local authorities have desegregated education with enormous success, says Mr Ujlaky. Without a decent education Roma will never be able to better themselves. The average life expectancy for Roma is ten to twelve years less than for non-Roma. It is an enormous waste of human potential.