A description of the dire situation in Roma settlements in Hungary: Poverty, unemployment, and not running water.
It hasn’t improved in the last 20 year at all, on the contrary.
Parties opposed to Viktor Orban agreed prior to the last elections to allow Roma politicians to run on their joint list. This also applied to Jobbik, an extreme right party that usually is very much against Roma and other minorities. Ferenc Varga a Rom, entered parliament in the 2022 election from the joint opposition list in the Jobbik faction.
On January 6, 2023, Ferenc Varga announced that he would leave the Jobbik parliamentary faction and continue his work as an independent. When asked why he made this decision, he said:
“The main reason was that the party was concerned with its own affairs and not with the voters. Even if the number of votes for the change of government was small in the election, we cannot help but constantly deal with the party’s internal affairs and infighting. I didn’t see a way out of this. I did everything in my field, I visited the country, I built the Gypsy Association with Honour, but the politicians who have been sitting in the parliament for several years practically did nothing.”
The Jobbik fraction wants him to give up his seat for another Jobbik politician, but Ferenc Varga refuses, saying that he was elected as part of the overall opposition coalition.
A Hungarian movie series based on Roma tales was just realised. It was done a unique 3D series. The Gypsy Tales series was the idea of Mária Horváth, one of the founding members of the Kecskemét Animation Studio. After finishing the Hungarian folk tales, it occurred to her to show the values hidden in Roma culture through Roma tales. The creators consider it important that Roma should be proud not only of their music, but also of their fine arts and literature.
The Christian Roma Vocational Colleges Network and the Roma Vocational Colleges Association will participate in a professional trip at the beginning of March to present themselves at an international conference in Brussels.
In Hungary, eleven Roma vocational colleges have been working for more than ten years on the higher education career path and institutional and social integration of young people of Roma origin and/or underprivileged.
The issue with this is the fact that education is segregated. That seems not to be obvious to the promoters of such colleges…
A scandal broke out at a festival in Miskolc, Hungary. Gyula Horváth, the president of a Roma organisation had all the permission to collect donations and distribute balloons at the festival. The city police, however, harassed him and told him to leave.
“They have been harassing me since the morning, since the Festival started. First they wanted to disturb me, then they threatened me, then they wanted to ring out the stand with a cordon. There were about ten people here, they checked my papers, but I have all the official permits,” Horváth told.
The president negotiated with the police for two hours. In the meantime, they took photos of him, and then the police sent the photos to the mayor.
The Hungarian movie “Larry” was one of the cinema surprises at the end of 2022 and perhaps the biggest Hungarian film success. This is not a Roma movie, but it is refreshingly different in the way Roma appear in this movie. In addition, a part of the film takes place in the Edeleny Roma settlement with its residents.
An interview with Roland Ferkovic, a Rom, about his issues with Hungarian higher education.
A former bricklayer helps Roma children get to a better school. László was only three days old when his parents abandoned him and he was placed in a foster home. The Roma boy then learned the most important thing: to stand up for himself, and later for others. His hard work and perseverance eventually took the former mason to amazing heights, working in the European Commission.
The newly formed Integrity Authority, which is supposed to investigate cases of corruption, has requested documents of the National Roma Self-Government’s Bridge to the World of Work program. This was announced by the chairman of the board in ATV after the NAV terminated the investigation into the catch-up program linked to the former Fidesz MP Flórián Farkas after 7 years.
The Hungarian National Roma Self Government has been engulfed in several controverses recently and been accused of mismanagement.
An article about the InDaHouse association which teaches young children from poor families, mostly Roma. Kinga Tillmann has been working for the InDaHouse association for six years and today coordinates the early education program. She believes her work has the greatest impact at this stage of life: “There are families where there are no developmental toys at home, no books, and no knowledge of how to play with a six-month-old. We want to compensate for this so that there are no backlogs that could lead to school failure.”
“It’s mainly urban, academic volunteers who come to the villages and take care of the children and assure them of their love and trust. These children will still experience racism on a daily basis, but because they get a lot of positive reinforcement from us, we believe that they will be able to function as equal partners, as citizens in society,” explains InDaHouse President Fruzsina Benkő.
Géza Ásós, who opened Hungary’s first Gypsy restaurant in Békés 11 years ago, gave a presentation at the first International Roma Business Forum in Brussels. In an interview with the Hungarian broadcast of Euronews, he said that his restaurant connects Hungarians and Roma. According to him, integration is helped by the fact that there is a labour shortage in Hungary, as a result of which Roma workers are encountered in more and more places and in more and more positions.
The Roma Business Forum was held in the European Parliament. The conference was organized by Fidesz MEP Lívia Járóka in order for Gypsy businessmen and EU decision-makers to share their experiences of difficulties and best practices. It is to be noted that Lívia Járóka is somewhat contested, as she fully supports the Orban government in spite of its repeated statements and acts on Roma.
Roberta Metsola, the President of the European Parliament, Olivér Várhelyi, the EU Commissioner responsible for enlargement and neighbourhood policy, and Attila Sztojka, a member of the Hungarian Parliament, who as a government commissioner assists with matters related to the Roma, spoke at the meeting.
The music group “Fekete Vonat” [Black Train] has reunited and released a new album. They played together for only five years, and it has been twenty years since the band broke up.
The band was founded in 1997. It got its name from the train transporting workers during the Kádár era. The black train brought and took workers from Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county to the capital and the country’s major cities. Among the passengers there were many unskilled Roma helpers living in segregation.
With this choice of name, the Fekete Vonat band announced their support for the Hungarian Roma and the importance of the fight against segregation and racism. That is why around the turn of the millennium they enjoyed huge popularity among the Roma in Hungary and abroad, and the whole country was in love with their songs and soundscape.
Katalin Törley, a teacher in the Ferenc-Kölcsey High School is one of five teachers who were recently fired for having circumvented a right to strike that had become impossible to exercise. These firings prompted unprecedented protests in Hungary.
What is less known is that Katalin Törley, on a part time basis is providing school support for young Roma.
The new collaboration of Roma organisations from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary is well under way.
A report of the discriminations faced by Roma and their lack of possibilities of recourse against these in the judicial system in Hungary and Serbia. This is bad but not surprising.
The English version of an article that appeared last week in German on the confession of the leader of the group which murdered Roma in Hungary 13 years ago.
The new editor-in-chief of Vasárnap.hu, a close-to-government Christian newspaper supported by taxpayers’ money, was an active participant in the demonstrations of the far-right, neo-Nazi Force and Determination movement. When contacted by Telex, Tamás Horváth did not confirm that he was a member of the organization at first. A few days later, he briefly commented to a government newspaper that he was close to the organization. Then he still responded to some questions, but he didn’t really want to say that he condemned the Nazis and the Arrows, he didn’t give an unequivocal answer to these questions.
Sunday 11th of September saw a large Neo-Nazi demonstration in the Eastern Hungarian Town of Nyiredyhaza. This manifestation was organised by Mi Hazánk Mozgalom (Our Homeland Movement) following the stabbing of a security guard allied to the movement in front of a nightclub. The group made Roma collectively responsible for the deed.
Luckily, this time, Roma protesters outnumbered the Neo-Nazis.
The president of the Hungarian Democratic Coalition and a former prime minister, commented on the arrest of the president of the National Roma Self-Government in his social media post: “The president of the National Roma Self-Government was arrested. He is suspected of official bribery. Scandal follows scandal in Roma public life, leader accused of crime after leader accused of crime. Cautious sentences follow, because the ice on which we tread is thin when raising such a question. The heated comments can come quickly. Maybe they will come. I’m trying to be careful.”
The real issue is the pseudo self-government which has no power whatsoever.
13 years after the facts, the leader of the extreme right group which killed Roma in Hungary admitted the facts. He had denied in spite of DNA evidence to have taken part in the murders. He also said that some others were still free. Hungary only jailed three people for the murders and took a long time to judge them.
The filmmaker and journalist Andras B. Vagvölgyi who is one of the best expert on the case told DW that “No political side in the country has an interest in the complete investigation and processing of the Roma murder series, there is a consensus on all sides.,” He was present during most of the trial days in the multi-year trial against the perpetrators and published a book on the Roma murder series in 2016.
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