Journalist Bernhard Odehnal writes about a Rroma family in a village outside Budapest and the situation of Rroma in Hungary in general. After the call for the extinction of Rroma by the extremist publicist Zsolt Bayer, the topic of Rroma has gained increased attention by the media. However, according to Odehnal, poor Rroma families often don’t consume any official media and are not ware of the Bayer debate going on. Odehnal goes on to describe the hardships and discrimination most Rroma face in Hungary, with long time unemployment leading to apathy and resignation rather than revolution and upheaval.
He continues to explain how the Jobbik party systematically ethnicizes every criminal act done by a Rroma as inherent part of Rroma identity, declaring it as “gypsy criminality”. This mixing of ethnic identity and criminal activities is highly racist, as are attributions of journalists, who describe Rroma as of an aggressive, hostile nature.
Despite the empathetic focus of Odehnal article, the author reproduces stereotypes about the Rroma by stating that most Rroma live in Ghettos outside the villages and have excessive amounts of children. Additionally, he citties a Spanish infant educator, who sees Rroma women as “submissive and only wanting many children and Rroma men being openly sexist”. Also, when reading the article, when gets the impression, that according to Odehnal all of the 750’000 Hungarian Rroma live in the conditions he portrays in his article. He doesn’t talk about the invisible Rroma, which don’t live in Ghettos, the ones who live a life in the middle class and are not seen on the streets.
Aladár Horváth and Anikó Kiss (Pester Lloyd 2013) from the citizen’s movement of Hungary posted an official manifesto to the Orban government, asking to finally acknowledge that a humanitarian crisis is on the march, with one million people in Hungary, among them around a quarter of Rroma, living under precarious conditions, being close to starving and freezing to death. They criticize, that there is no public moral support for the situation of the Rroma, that the government doesn’t distance itself from extremist statements made against Rroma and that there are no social-critical articles in the official media.
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