08.10.2014 Forced expulsion of Rroma in Miskolc

Odehnal (2014) reports on the eviction of around 600 Rroma from the North-Hungarian city of Miskolc. All the reasons cited for the eviction of the Rroma settlement, called by the locals the “numbered streets”, point to racist motives. On one hand, for nearby football stadium, which is to be developed into a Fifa-grade stadium, a bus parking for 400 buses is planned instead of the Rroma settlement. However, between the stadium and the settlement, there is a big, empty wasteland that would also serve this purpose. Much more obviously racist are the other reasons given. It’s the upcoming mayoral elections: “In the whole of Hungary, at October the 12th, local elections take place, and in Miskolc the campaign focuses completely on the topic of the alleged Roma crime. Also the coalition of the left parties participates in it. Their candidates campaign with the promise that they will “make order”: Miskolc should be returned to the natives of Miskolc [meaning ethnic Magyars]. Campaigns against the minority have been running in Miskolc for years. The former police chief of Miskolc, Albert Pasztor, stated in 2009 that exclusively Roma committed burglaries and robberies in the city: living together with the minority was “simply impossible””. Now Pasztor runs for election as mayor of Miskolc, as a socialist candidate. The incumbent city major, Akos Kriza of the Fidesz-party, justifies the destruction of the Rroma settlement on the grounds of wanting to improve public safety, which must be unequivocally interpreted as a deliberate expulsion of alleged “criminal Rroma”. The inhuman hierarchy of ethnic groups becomes most distinctly manifest among the far-right Jobbik: “One has to separate the constructive from the destructive people”, party leader Gabor Vona announced two years ago, when they organized a protest march through the Romani settlement. That the degradation of democracy and the rule of law in Hungary are not only propaganda by foreign media, as nationalist Hungarian repeatedly claim in newspaper articles and Internet forums, should be becoming clear. A state that does not want to protect its minorities from discrimination and expulsion, but even promotes it, is no longer a real democracy (compare Pusztaranger 2014).