After six Roma murdered, arrests bring hope of change in Hungary

Published on Thursday 27 August 2009 22:15

THE attack left the 13-year-old gypsy girl bloodied and unconscious, her body riddled with about 100 shotgun pellets.

In the room next door, Maria Balogh, her 45-year-old mother, lay dead: the sixth victim of a string of murders in Hungary that have sent shock waves rippling through Roma communities throughout Central Europe.

Often the victims of discrimination, the Roma this month apparently became the target of a gang determined to kill. Laszlo Solyom, the Hungarian president, warned that the country's stability was under threat and ethnic tensions could spiral out of control.

During the same period, violence also tainted the Czech Republic. A country famed for the beauty of Prague and its velvet revolution against communism revealed an ugly side when a fire-bomb attack on a Roma home by right-wing extremists left a two-year-old critically injured.

But despite an upsurge in reported anti-Roma violence, perhaps the tide has changed in favour of Europe's largest ethnic minority, who are believed to have their roots in the Indian subcontinent.

Last week Hungarian police arrested four on suspicion of carrying out the six murders that had terrorised the Roma people, while in the Czech Republic a number of right-wing extremists found themselves in the cells in connection with the fire-bomb attack.

"The suspects' motivations are presumably racist, but we can clearly state this only if the suspects explain their actions," Attila Petofi, the director of Hungary's National Investigation Bureau, told reporters.

A Hungarian newspaper claimed that one of the men in custody, known only Istvan K, was a fanatical Roma hater who had a history of racist crimes.

Roma rights groups welcomed the arrests, saying that they made a refreshing change to the inertia that had once coloured the investigation into the Hungarian killings.

"This is good news. Our position has always been that law enforcement must react effectively, and for a long time it hasn't done so," said Robert Kushen, managing director of the Budapest-based European Roma Rights Centre.

"If you look at the murders, the initial response indicated serious problems at the local level. They created the impression that it was OK to kill Roma. The authorities didn't consider murders criminal acts."

In the Czech Republic, under the leadership of the country's caretaker government, the police have made a number of breakthroughs in the fight against anti-Roma crime.

US pop star Madonna discovered the depth of tensions between Roma and non-Roma populations in Central Europe on Wednesday night, when she was performing in Budapest.

"It has been brought to my attention … that there is a lot of discrimination against Romanies and Gypsies in general in eastern Europe," she said on stage. "It made me feel very sad."

Thousands booed and jeered her.