HUNGARY’S JUSTICE minister has admitted that his country’s police force is failing to find those responsible for a growing number of fatal attacks on members of the Roma, or Gypsy, community.
Tibor Draskovics pledged to deploy more police to rural areas after the latest killing, in which a Roma man and his five-year-old son were apparently shot dead as they escaped their burning home.
Roma activists said the house had been set alight by a petrol bomb, and noted that it bore striking similarities to an attack in rural Hungary late last year in which two Roma were killed.
There has been an increase in serious assaults against and murders of Roma in Hungary in recent months, but most of the cases remain unsolved.
“We have not been able to track down the perpetrators of these crimes even though we have a 95 per cent detection rate in homicide cases overall,” Mr Draskovics told parliament.
“The real change will have to happen inside us . . . The fight against hatred is not a police job.”
Growing economic problems and rising unemployment in Hungary have stoked long-held racial prejudices, and far-right organisations have become more prominent through claims that white Hungarians are suffering an onslaught of “Gypsy crime”.
The most high-profile nationalist group, the Magyar Garda or Hungarian Guard, wear uniforms and insignia reminiscent of those used by Hungary’s wartime fascist rulers, and often march through Roma areas. Critics call them racist thugs, while they claim to be upholding Hungarian values and traditions.
Hungary’s ombudsman in charge of minority affairs, Erno Kallai, urged parliament to take resolute steps to “salvage peace in society”, noting that none of the perpetrators of more than a dozen armed attacks against Roma in the past year had been caught. “There isn’t just an economic crisis, but a social one too,” he said.
His words echoed those of Florian Farkas, head of Roma rights group Lungo Drom, who warned that, “unless a solution is found for the integration of the Roma, there will be a civil-war situation”.
A Council of Europe committee yesterday also criticised rising racism in Hungary, where a population of 10 million includes at least 500,000 Roma.