Hungary Jails 4 Neo-Nazis After Killing Spree
A
Hungarian court found four men guilty on Tuesday (August 6) of killing
Roma families in a spree of racist violence in 2008 and 2009 that shocked the country and led to accusations that police had failed to protect an historically persecuted minority.
Six Roma were killed and several wounded in the attacks, which created a climate of fear for members of
Hungary's largest ethnic minority. Roma, who make up about 7 percent of the population of
10 million, face widespread discrimination and often live in dire poverty.
The attacks were carefully planned and carried out over a 13-month period across the country, leaving the nation's Roma terrified while the perpetrators remained on the loose.
In one of the attacks, several men set fire to a house at the edge of the dusty village of
Tatarszentgyorgy, near a forest
30 minutes from
Budapest, late at night on
Feb 22, 2009.
When the inhabitants fled the burning building, the attackers shot dead
Robert Csorba, a 29-year-old Roma man, and his 4-year-old son
Robert Jr. A girl was also seriously wounded. The assailants fled.
According to Roma advocates, police documents show that the authorities dragged their feet in investigating the attack, which was part of a series of killings that had already unleashed fear throughout the Roma community for months.
The last attack in the spree occurred six months later when a young Roma woman was killed in eastern Hungary, after which the perpetrators were finally caught.
Roma have lived in Hungary for centuries and are now scattered mainly in rural areas in the northeast and south of the country.
The collapse of heavy industry after communism in
1989 hit the Roma hard. Unemployment is widespread, generations of Roma have grown up poor and illiterate, and some have resorted to petty crime to make ends meet.
Hostility towards them among many other
Hungarians has helped fuel the rise of the far-right
Jobbik party, which vilifies the Roma openly and won 17 percent of votes for parliament in
2010, becoming the third biggest party.
Back in 2009, the funeral of the Csorbas, father and son, was seen as an opportunity to encourage understanding between Roma and other Hungarians. Celebrities attended the service, but their presence did little to change attitudes, said Szilvia
Varro, an activist who helped organise the funeral.
Communication Centre X (XKK) released a series of video clips last month with well-known Hungarian actors reciting excerpts from the trial testimony, describing the killings while blood stains are shown spreading over them.
Another advocacy group, the
Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, said the court had a responsibility to make it clear that racism was not tolerable.