Prominent Roma raise voices against hostility against Roma in Hungary

27-07-2005 07:05

A group of prominent Roma intellectuals have signed a petition to object against the discrimination of poor Roma students in the Hungarian state-funded school system. Aladar Horvath, Chairman of the Roma Right Foundation, said that currently about 50% of all poor (Roma) children are being systematically placed into classes that were intended for mentally disabled children. Horvath said that the petition was sparked after Catholic Bishop Andras Veres publicly announced that the Hungarian Catholics Bishops' Conference (MKPK) that Hungarian (white) children should not be educated together with poor (underprivileged) minorities' (in this case Roma) children who would only be a setback for 'normal' children. About four dozen people signed the document calling for the government schools to cease its current practice of segregating the poor Roma children from the non-Roma children under the grounds of placing them in remedial classes allegedly needed to educate multiple-disabled children. Leading community celebrities including Judit Berki , Mihaly Csako , Ferenc Eros, Zsuzsa Ferge, Miklos Hadas, Gabor Havas , Maria Herczog , Aladar Horvath , Gabor Kertesi, Ilona Lisko , Tamas Majsai , Viktoria Mohacsi, Eva Orsos all signed up in protest against the misconduct against treating and classifying perfectly normal Roma children as idiots that need special mental assistance. Csaba Bader, Chairman of the Roma e-learning Hungary group RomNet Media Foundation said that he fears that governments in Hungary and the EU have does nothing to disperse anti-Roma behaviors and hate-speech against the Roma community.

Bader added that RomNet has just recently appealed another unfavourable police ruling that there had was "no criminal offence due to the lackof evidence" closed the investigations against 'unknown perpetrators" who have up-loaded a computer game under the name Olah Action where the players are invited to "wipe out" the Roma in Hungary. The game first surface in February this year and police promised to take immediate action after Jozsef Ignacz, Chief Editor of Radio C and the Roma community filed a complaint and expressed outrage at a Hungarian language Internet computer game called Olah Action which advocated "moving forward from county to county to cleanse Hungary of the Gypsies" providing players different weapons with which to kill. The game also included a phone booth with the writing "They (the Roma) do nothing. They steal, cheat, lie. They are a serious plague to the world, especially for this tiny European country." News of the site spread fast and on Feb 16, Czech television (Ceska Televisia) expressed concern about racism against minorities in Hungary. Although the issue was also taken up by the National Bureau of Investigation (NNI), the Hungarian version of the FBI, no "Action" was taken and no offenders were arrested, despite the fact two Ombudsman officials brought a ruling that the "game" seriously violated the anti-Hate Speech Act and the anti-Minorities act. Bader said that have 30 days to respond to his foundation's appeal and if no investigations are re-opened or an answer fails to arrive, then the foundation will launch a civil proceeding against the police for failing to do their national duty and as civil servants are thus abusing tax-payers' money. Bader said that Europe and Hungary should once and for all stop treating the Roma communities like second class citizens and should instead dig deep down to the root of the problem and help the Roma communities fully integrate into society.