Hungarian Spectrum

Stem cell "therapy" business in Hungary

The story broke on July 28 when a brief news item appeared on the official website of the Hungarian police. The police discovered that since early in 2007 a research laboratory and a private hospital had been engaged in embryonic stem cell therapy (not research) that is illegal in Hungary. In fact, it was only in January 2009 that the first country--bizarrely enough, the United States that as a result of political proscriptions had lagged the rest of the world in stem cell research--cleared the way for embryonic stem cell therapy. Geron Corporation got permission from the FDA to conduct clinical trials on people with spinal injuries. (See http://www.geron.com/media/pressview.aspx?id=1148)

The Hungarian police arrested four people: "B. Julliy" who turned out to be Yuliy Baltaytis, a Ukranian-born U.S. citizen; a Ukrainian woman, Natalia K., who apparently supplied the embryonic stem cells from Kharkov and Kiev; and two unnamed Hungarians, one of whom was charged with assisting the doctors "in the transportation of the cooling equipment, the handling of shipments from Ukraine, and the transportation of the patients to and fro." The police claimed that the "therapists" demanded 5 million Hungarian forints ($25,000) for a single treatment.

A few hours later Stop.hu already knew that the people were arrested in a Budapest hospital (it turned out to be the Gyula Nyírő Kórház) and that there was a police search somewhere in "southern Transdanubia." A few minutes later Somogy Megyei Újság, normally very well informed on local issues,  reported that the search took place in Kaposvár in a fancy private hospital specializing in plastic surgery. The hospital, Seffer-Renner Magánklinika Kft., is owned at least in part by two brothers: István and Tibor Seffer. István, it seems, is currently in police custody, but his brother Tibor and István's lawyer claim that their hospital has nothing to do with anything illegal. In November 2007 the hospital rented facilities to a laboratory--IRM Magyarország Zrt.--allegedly doing stem cell research. But since the laboratory never got the requisite permission to operate, the space has been empty ever since. They're right: the firm didn't get a permit from the Egészségügyi Tudományos Tanács (ETT; Medical Scientific Council) because the council could not corroborate the alleged qualifications of the applicants. For example, they couldn't find any scientific papers written by the doctors proposing the project. They found only two books written by Yuliy Baltaytis, both published at his own expense. Baltaytis proudly noted on his website that he was a member of an academy located in New York, but "it turned out that membership could be purchased for a yearly fee of $125,000."

ETT didn't know the half of it. I did a bit of research myself on Baltaytis, and one of my first hits was Quackwatch, an internet site that claims to be "Your Guide to Quackery, Health Fraud, and Intelligent Decisions." The article, dealing in part with Baltaytis, was written by Stephen Barrett, M.D. The title of the piece is "The Shady Side of Embryonic Stem Cell Therapy." An excerpt: "The Vita Nova Clinic offers stem cell therapy designed and administered by Professor Yuliy V. Baltaytis, MD, PhD, DSc. The Vita Nova site claims that Baltaytis has written six books and over 200 scientific articles and has successfully treated patients with arthritis, Alzheimer's, cancer, diabetes, leukemia, and many other conditions. However, he has no publications indexed in Medline and is not mentioned on any other Web site (which I would expect if he had significant scientific standing)."  http://www.xcell-center.com/treatments/overview.aspx?gclid=CO6tmPPJgJwCFdVL5QodFlsY-g From this article I gather that at one point Baltaytis was running a scam under the name of Vita Nova Clinic in the United States. However, soon enough he turned up in Barbados in a joint venture with Imre Pákh, an American-Hungarian, who nowadays lives off and on in Hungary. If my memory serves me, the elder Pákh who made a fortune in the United States was a great friend and supporter of József Torgyán and other right-wing Hungarian organizations. In fact, Torgyán was Pákh's guest during one of his travels to the United States. Pákh apparently decided to finance Baltaytis's venture in Barbados because he successfully treated his father.

The Barbados venture came to a sorry end in December 2006 when BBC did a bit of investigative reporting on this shady business. Even then the stem cells came from Ukraine where there are no regulations concerning embryonic stem cells. As a result of BBC's revelations the authorities in Barbados closed the operation down. Apparently Baltaytis subsequently gave an interview to the local media in which he announced that he was going to continue his work somewhere in Europe. That he settled on Hungary is not at all surprising given Pákh's stake in the business.

They were in a hurry. By June 2007 Baltaytis and Pákh established a new venture in Hungary: IRM Magyarország Nemzetközi Biotechnológiai és Őssejt Központ Zrt. The owner (50%) was IRM Biopharma Holdings Limited, incorporated in the Virgin Islands. The new firm's headquarters were in Budapest, in District XIII, and it had an affiliated site in Kaposvár, allegedly in the buildings of the Seffer hospital. The CEO of the company was Sándor Szabó and on the board we find Imre Pákh, István Seffer, the plastic surgeon from Kaposvár, and Ádám Fásy, a "media star" who apparently became rich as a result of starting beauty pageants in Hungary. Otherwise, Fásy has a rather primitive program on ATV called "Fásy mulató.""Fásy Revelry." I found a picture of Baltaytis (left) and Fásy (middle) taken on the occasion of opening the facilities in Kaposvár--whether in the hospital or elsewhere in the city we don't know.

How many people fell for this scam? The police definitely know about eight, but others guess that the number might be closer to 100. Blikk, a tabloid usually quite well informed, thinks that in the last two years the people involved might have taken in close to one billion forints. It seems that the "gang of four" had working arrangements with three hospitals. Whether the directors of these hospitals knew what was going on in their rented facilities is hard to tell. All of them now say they didn't have a clue.

In keeping with the high cost/low profile image of the venture, there have been media reports that the "treatment" was also administered in private apartments and hotel rooms, either by injection or infusion.

The police seized as evidence vials ready to be used at the raided Budapest hospitals. In the media there were all sorts of contradictory reports about the vials' contents. First, we were told that they contained only a saline solution, and some of the doctors interviewed were relieved. Later reports talked about some protein content, and even later reports said that there were indeed stem cells in the vials as well.

This little Hungarian business venture might be costly to its so-called entrepreneurs. According to the Hungarian criminal code trafficking in human organs carries a maximum of eight years.

The Hungarian police force

I hate to think how many people have been in charge of the 42,000 strong Hungarian police force in the last few years. Most of them were fired after a year. A few days ago there were rumors that the currrent one is going to get the sack after the terribly mishandled case of arson and murder in Tatárszentgyörgy. Well, he was spared, unlike his predecessor, who was fired because of the alleged rape of a young woman in downtown Pest by five policemen. It wasn't true, but Ferenc Gyurcsány somewhat hastily fired the police chief. Then there are all the changes at the head of the ministry of law and order. Perhaps this is the best translation (however obviously beholden to the powerful TV franchise--now, I understand, with a British version) of the ministry that was created by combining the ministry of justice with the ministry of the interior. The latter, as is the case in most European countries, was in charge of the police. MDF and its veteran politician Péter Boross, who briefly headed the interior department in the Antall government, are convinced that all the current problems of the police stem from Gyurcsány's decision to get rid of the ministry of the interior. If I remember correctly, there have been at least three "law and order" ministerial changes, but the effectiveness of the police hasn't improved.

What's wrong with the Hungarian police force? Some claim that the force is simply not big enough. However, I just read an article by two law professors specializing in criminal law and police work arguing that Hungary's police force is plenty big enough. For every 100,000 citizens there are 420 policemen, which makes Hungary one of five best endowed countries in Europe. Ahead of Hungary are Cyprus, Greece, Malta, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. The average in the European Union is 360. In fact, in the Scandinavian countries the police force is half the size of the Hungarian: 210 per 100,000 inhabitants.

The number of criminal cases has been dropping in the last few years, and the police have a good track record in solving murders--over 90%.  When it comes to robbery, however, the success rate is only about 20%. (See Géza Finszter and László Korinek, "Rekviem egy rendőrségért," Népszabadság, February 28, 2009.)

What does a young man have to do in order to become a police officer in Hungary? Plenty. He not only has to finish high school but he has to take his matriculation examinations before entering police academy for two years. Then how is it possible that police work is so often unprofessional? Apparently most of what the cadets learn is academic--theory, not practice. Law and sociology at the expense of nitty gritty police work. Another problem is that too many policemen are paper pushers and not enough patrol the streets. Perhaps the Budapest police chief exaggerated the other day when in an interview he said that 90 people supervise 120! But above all, say Finszter and Korinek, the police force doesn't function well because the whole structure is wrong. Basically, the strictly hierarchical structure inherited from the Kádár regime cannot deal with the problems of today. The disaster of the mob attack on the MTV headquarters in September 2006 awakened the government to the fact that something must be done: the Hungarian police cannot handle, for example, riots. They don't have the equipment and the whole structure is too cumbersome to act swiftly and effectively. Moreover, the men don't really know what to do in a situation like that. So a committee was set up: historians, sociologists, former high ranking police officers, and legal experts put their heads together and came up with, according to the authors, impressive recommendations. The government received the committee's document which to this day is gathering dust somewhere in one of the ministries.

Then every time there was a new police chief he tinkered with the internal structure of the force. To no avail. A central command can't effectively allocate officers to places where they are really needed. The local cop on the beat can't morph overnight into a member of a riot squad. Just to give one truly outlandish example, during the disturbances at the television station policemen from outside Budapest were ordered to the capital where they promptly got lost.

Therefore more and more people are recommending a decentralized police force. Each big city or even middle-sized town should have a police force of its own. Several villages nearby could share two or three policemen on duty all the time. Of course, for serious disturbances one would still need hundreds of policemen to make sure that a demonstration is well covered. Finszter and Korinek suggest a regional police force that could be called upon in time of need. Such a thorough reorganization of the police force would need time. Perhaps a decade. A step by step strategy should be initiated; implementation should be done incrementally.

As far as I can see there is no visible sign of such a strategy as yet, and if I'm not mistaken the tinkering continues even after the latest jolt at Tatárszentgyörgy. Meanwhile they are madly looking for those who burned down the house of the Roma family and killed father and son. By now they're talking about serial murderers, highlighting the similarities between Tatárszentgyörgy and Nagycsécs. It is hard to judge the cause of the policemen's lackadaisical handling of the case. Was it because they didn't care very much about the Gypsy victims? Was it because they were lazy? Was it because they were incompetent? Were they misled by the doctor who didn't notice the gunshot wounds inflicted by a hunting rifle? What about the firemen who never checked whether the fire was a case of arson? There are too many questions. Meanwhile I don't believe that there will be real improvement in the performance of the Hungarian police anytime soon. The force will receive an additional billion forints next year. They will be able to hire 1,600 new officers, but as I mentioned at the beginning of this blog the problem is not really the size of the force. Meanwhile, the majority of Hungarians think that with a larger and more effective force "crimes against the Roma" can be eliminated. I very much doubt it.

Crimes against Gypsies: 2008-2009

Népszabadság published a list of crimes committed against Gypsies in the last year or so. They mentioned 12 incidents but according to Viktória Mohácsi, Roma activist and SZDSZ member of the European parliament, the number is higher--16 or 17. In defense of the paper, it was not trying to come up with a definitive number; rather, it was summarizing those cases the paper had previously reported on. And I will summarize even more briefly.

The first incident occurred on January 22, 2008, in Szigetvár when five punks from Barcs attacked a Gypsy woman and her daughter late in the evening in the center of town. I wrote about the court's decision in this case: it was not a hate crime, it was not racially motivated. After all, said the judge, these fellows were not from Szigetvár and therefore they couldn't have known that this particular area was frequented by Gypsies. And second, it was dark so how could they tell that the mother and daughter were Gypsies? On March 1 in Tiszaroff someone set fire to the house of a local Gypsy leader and scribbled ugly epithets on the wall of his house. This case was never solved. On March 15 in Tapolca two 17-year-olds out of the blue beat a 32-year-old Roma man. He was seriously hurt and had a long hospital stay. On June 3 in Pátka Molotov cocktails were thrown into three houses. No one was injured but in the room where the children were asleep fire broke out. This time the police managed to find the perpetrators: the civilians who are helping the police keep order in the village! They are in custody but have not yet been brought to trial. On June 15 in Fényeslitke after a loud verbal exchange in a pub a 40-year-old local killed a 14-year-old Roma boy and seriously wonded his 16-year-old companion. On July 21 in Galgagyörk shortly after midnight someone fired through the windows of three houses owned by Gypsies. Luckily no one was hurt. The perpetrator remains at large. On August 8 in Pirics someone threw Molotov cocktails into two houses inhabited by Gypsies and wounded a woman who tried to flee. On August 19 in Székesfehérvár a bunch of youngsters hurled stones through the windows of an apartment house inhabited primarily by Gypsies. A 12-year-old girl was seriously wounded. On September 5 In Nyíradony-Tamásipuszta shots were fired at a house owned by Gypsies. Luckily, no one was hurt. On November 3 in Nagycsécs unknown assailants threw Molotov cocktails into two houses facing each other. When the inhabitants tried to escape two were shot dead. On November 18 in Pécs a grenade was thrown into a Gypsy family's house. The parents died but three of their children miraculously survived. On December 15 in the Alsózsolca Gypsy ghetto a 19-year-old man, cutting wood in the yard, was seriously injured when someone fired two shots at him.

With the exception of the Szigetvár and Pátka cases not one assailant has been apprehended to date. In the Nagycsécs case which, by the way, shows a remarkable similarity to the one in Tatárszentgyörgy the police offered a 10 million forint reward to anyone who can lead the police to the suspect. No luck.

In the face of the escalating crimes against Gypsies, many Hungarians don't understand why László Sólyom, president of the republic and self-styled moralist, has been silent on this issue. Last November, after the Nagycsécs arson and murder, the Association for Human Rights (Társaság a Szabadságjogokért) wrote a private letter to Sólyom and asked him to make a statement. President Sólyom never answered. They waited and waited until February 16, that is before the Tatárszentgyörgy murders, when together with several other groups concerned with minorities they wrote another letter to Sólyom. Once again they got no answer. Instead the president issued an essentially meaningless communiqué yesterday in which he expressed his hope that the police would discover the "motive" behind the murders soon. It is becoming clear that Sólyom is not willing to stick his neck out.

As we all know, Sólyom is no milquetoast. He can be tough, some might say irrationally stubborn, on issues that are important to him. For example, the U.S. practice of fingerprinting foreigners entering the country. Shortly after becoming president, he threw all diplomatic niceties to the wind and announced that he would not visit the United States as long as the country insisted on fingerprinting its foreign visitors. Or the case of the wild roses on the southern slopes of the Mecsek Mountains about the same time. He voiced his strong opposition to a radar installation nearby. NATO requirement or not, to this day there is no radar tower built in the Mecsek Mountains. He had no problem expressing his moral outrage after Őszöd when, even as the MTV building was under siege, he pretty well demanded Ferenc Gyurcsány's resignation. Or just today Sólyom traveled to Dunapataj where he gave a speech in the memory of the victims of communism. Perhaps HírTV, a right-wing television station, is correct in assuming that Sólyom doesn't want to make a statement because "the liberal legal defense organizations are expecting a racist statement" from the president. Racist from HírTV means: "in defense of the Gypsies." HírTV expressed its disapproval of Sólyom's silence after the Veszprém murder of handball star Marian Cozma by Romas belonging to the underworld.

My feeling is that Sólyom will continue to remain silent on the issue of hate crimes against Gypsies. As things now stand Fidesz is the odds-on favorite to win the elections next year, and I'm sure that László Sólyom would dearly love to have his five-year term extended. If his fate is in Viktor Orbán's hands, why side with the liberals? The best thing is to be quiet.

Two new victims in yet another attack against a Gypsy family

Two Gypsies, a man and his four-year-old son, are dead. They were victims of fatal gunshot wounds received while fleeing their house that had been torched.

They lived in Tatárszentgyörgy (Pest County), a village with a population of about 1,800. Because there are no ethnic statistics I don't know how many of these people are Roma. I assume a fair number because this is not the first time that I encountered Tatárszentgyörgy in the Hungarian media. In December 2007 the Hungarian Guard (Magyar Gárda), formed a few months earlier, decided to have a demonstration in Tatárszentgyörgy against "the existing Gypsy terror." The march of the guardists in military formation was designed to put the fear of God into the local Gypsy population. József Tibor Bíber, then vice chairman of Jobbik, the party of the far right, made a rather threatening speech, reminding people of the horrible incident at Olaszliszka a year before where a Gypsy mob attacked and killed the driver of a car in front of his two daughters. The precipitating cause: a young Gypsy girl ran from her house into the road; the car struck her. Although the girl sustained no serious injuries, the enraged relatives killed the driver. (Just to give you an idea of how slow Hungarian justice is, the case hasn't been decided yet.)

But let's get back to Tatárszentgyörgy. The family had a good reputation in the village. They built a new house with a modern kitchen and bathroom. The young man was a musician, and the family photos show a good-looking family sitting in a well-appointed living room.

So what happened?  As far as I can piece things together, a fire broke out in the house around one o'clock in the morning on February 23. The father phoned the fire department, then set about to get his family out of the house. He managed to save his wife and two of the older children, but as he was running out of the house with the youngest boy in his arms both were fatally shot. The father's family who lived next door immediately called the police and an ambulance. The police arrived about half an hour later and the ambulance sometime after that. By that time, both father and son were dead. Two of the older children, a boy and a girl, were injured, one of them fairly seriously. The ambulance took them and their mother, in shock, to a Budapest children's hospital.

The firefighters and the police didn't seem to be concerned. The firefighters perfunctorily announced that the fire was caused by faulty wiring. Although the neighbors apparently kept telling the police that they heard shots, the police refused to consider the possibility of either arson or murder. Eventually the doctor from nearby Örkény arrived to ascertain the cause of death. Two versions, one earlier and another later, circulate. According to the first, the family doctor didn't notice the gunshot wounds in father and son and announced that they had died of smoke inhalation. The second version came later, in the afternoon, from the head of the medical establishment where the doctor worked. According to him, the doctor noticed the bullet wounds and appropriately reported it. I'm afraid I don't quite believe the head of the practice. Because if the doctor actually noticed the bullet wounds, then how it was possible that the police didn't handle the incident as a possible crime? Because they didn't. For example, they didn't cordon off the area, they didn't check the grounds and thus they didn't notice the blood-stained snow near the house.

The local police suddenly changed their tune when the neighbors got in touch with some of the nationally known Roma leaders--Viktória Mohácsi, SZDSZ member of the European Parliament, and Orbán Kolompár, president of the National Gypsy Association (OCÖ)--who in turn phoned József Bencze, head of the country's police force. By the afternoon, in what can only be viewed as a pathetic parody of all the CSI TV programs, they had roped off the crime scene, discovered the blood stains, acknowledged the empty shell casings they had received from the neighbors, and admitted that close to the window of the room where the fire started there was a broken bottle. Bencze immediately ordered an investigation. But the odds of solving this case are slim. After all, just in the last year sixteen or seventeen very similar incidents have occurred: Molotov cocktail, tail end of the village, close to a forest, bullets from a shotgun and already there were a couple of victims who died under very similar circumstances. As of now not one case has been solved.

But by now everybody has moved into high gear. A group of researchers of the Roma question wrote to László Sólyom that he should say something about the dangerous situation that has developed in the country. We don't know whether he will make any public statement--until now he certainly hasn't although there was plenty reason to do so--but he called in the police chief and the minister in charge of the police for consultation. I assume that meant that he kept asking why the police cannot keep order in the country. The ombudsman for minorities, Ernő Kállai, himself of Roma origin, asked to be heard in parliament. He made a speech in which he asked for a "peace plan" between Romas and non-Romas. Apparently only about 25 members were interested in what he had to say. While Gypsy politicians on the left accuse Fidesz and the right of inflaming passions, Fidesz Roma leaders claim that there is only one problem: there is no order in the country. A stronger police force is the answer.

Meanwhile, a committee of the European Council dealing with racism and intolerance sent a report to the Hungarian government in which they expressed their disapproval of Hungary's legal system that gives too much leeway to hate speech. I don't know what President Sólyom will do now because time and time again he has defended a broad interpretation of free speech. This would be the second time that Sólyom's and thus the Constitutional Court's opinions don't meet the approval of the European Union. Knowing Sólyom and the Hungarian Constitutional Court nothing will change. Meanwhile the attacks on Gypsies can merrily continue. And I guess the use of Molotov cocktails and killings. But where will that lead?

Anti-Gypsy prejudice in Hungary

Two sources about Hungarian attitudes toward Gypsies were cited recently in comments to this blog. First was the book by Barna Mezey, László Pomogyi, and István Tauber (Budapest, 1985) entitled A magyarországi cigánykérdés dokumentumokban, 1422-1985 (The Gypsy question in Hungary: Documents, 1422-1985). Second was a poll by the Progressive Institute. We are familiar with this political think tank in connection with a poll that attempted to assess the political thinking of the Hungarian population. I summarized the Institute's findings on January 9, 2009 ("Political map of the Hungarian population"). This brand new poll (http://www.publicus.hu/blog/ciganyellenesseg) is an offshoot of the earlier one; it concentrates on Hungarian attitudes toward the Roma. Because most of the readers of this blog aren't fluent in Hungarian, let me summarize the book and then move on to the poll. The book is fairly lengthy, so I will concentrate on things that were either new to me or that I found significant in explaining the sources of anti-Gypsy prejudice. Because it seems that anti-Gypsy prejudice is at least three hundred years old.

So, starting with the Mezey-Pomogyi-Tauber book. Of course, we all know that the Gypsies came from India and that the Romani language is one of the Indo-Aryan languages showing a close affinity with Hindi. As far as we can ascertain, the Gypsies originally came from northern India and parts of Pakistan. There are loan words from Greek, Persian, and Armenian that point to a prolonged stay in Anatolia. Apparently the Mongol invasion of parts of Central Asia prompted their westward migration. Already in the fourteenth century some Gypsies reached the Carpathian basin, but most of these groups (kumpanias) continued their move farther west. However, western countries didn't welcome the nomadic visitors from the east, and soon enough the authorities made their stay impossible. So they retreated back to the place where they were more tolerated, i.e. to medieval Hungary. Apparently, this first group of migrants pretty well settled and assimilated after a couple hundred years.

But after the Turkish occupation there was a new wave of immigration coming from Moldavia and Wallachia, the eastern parts of today's Romania. They were called the "oláh" Gypsies. Oláh until very recently was the acceptable name for a Romanian. Oláh is the Hungarian version of Vlach which in old Slavonic was used to describe any language related to Latin. Thus, for example, Italian is called "olasz" in Hungarian. The "oláh" Gypsies were nomadic and completely unfamiliar with the accepted norms of the Hungarian population around them. Soon enough troubles began. After the Turks left and the wars for independence (the Rákóczi rebellion, for example) failed, the bulk of the Hungarian population settled into a stolid agrarian life. The differences between the Hungarian peasantry and the still nomadic Gypsy kumpanias became increasingly stark, and the relations between the two groups deteriorated. The peasants claimed that Gypsies would camp close to a village, steal the villagers blind, and then move on. More and more complaints reached the authorities until in 1782 a large Gypsy caravan (173 people) was arrested for theft. While the Gypsies were in custody, the news came that in a nearby village a few people had disappeared. That came in handy; the Gypsies were accused of killing the missing men. And because their bodies were not found the authorities made the Gypsies admit that they had eaten the bodies! One can only imagine what kind of torture was necessary to elicit confessions to such a heinous crime. The court (in Hont County, today in Slovakia) sentenced all of them to death. Forty-one of the "guilty," including 11 women, were executed before Joseph II heard about the case and stopped the bloodshed. The lord lieutenant of the county was suspended, a new trial was ordered, and most of the others were released. Even German newspapers (Hamburg and Frankfurt) reported the case.

Hungarian Gypsies got bad press as early as the seventeenth century when foreign visitors were warned that "the Gypsies are great thieves." (Edward Brown, 1669) In 1856 Gedeon Ács wrote: "Among the oláh Gypsies there are many wanderers carrying their tents with them. ... They settle at the edge of the village and although the villagers are very careful many pigs, geese, vegetables, even dogs and cats disappear.... The Hungarians consider the Gypsy cowardly, but I believe they are wrong. It is true that one Hungarian can make a whole bunch of Gypsies run ... but it is also true that once they manage to escape they become very brave and enterprising rascals." However Ács adds that that there are some well dressed gentlemen among them and that in his youth in Debrecen the most elegant ball was that of the Gypsies. He even knew Gypsies who settled and cultivated the land.

The book, in its documentary section, includes many petitions to parliament in which the authorities from the countryside complain about the problem of the oláh Gypsies. In 1885 the deputy lieutenant from Veszprém County complained that the wandering Gypsies are a menace and that every village dreads their arrival. The Veszprém authorities, as so many others, asked the central government to put an end to Gypsy wandering. Easier said than done. The greatest complaint was that the oláh  Gypsies steal and that when the police try to apprehend them they are prepared for an armed offensive against the police. Parliamentary members complained bitterly to the minister of the interior about the menace of these oláh Gypsies, but their complaints went unanswered. The problem continued into the twentieth century. By 1928 nomadic Gypsies were supposed to be arrested and taken to the nearest police station. Some of them were confined for awhile to houses of correction, but one couldn't keep them there indefinitely. As soon as they were released they went back to their accustomed lifestyles.

The Kádár government was the first to address the problem of the Gypsy underclass in a serious way. In a socialist economy where there was virtually no unemployment Gypsies were embraced in the work force. But these efforts didn't improve Hungarian perceptions of Gypsies. And vaulting forward to 2009: the current anti-Gypsy sentiment is pretty alarming. According to the poll taken by Publicus/Progressive, 81% of the population is anti-Gypsy, and there is no great difference between those with an eighth-grade education and those with a college degree: 81% versus 76%. It doesn't make much difference whether a person considers himself a right-winger or a left-winger: 85% versus 79%. Eighty-two percent think that the Gypsies' problems would be solved if "at last they began working."

It easy to see that a political party can make headway with anti-Gypsy propaganda. Consider the recent success of Jobbik and the Magyar Gárda. Or think of Viktor Orbán's (undocumented) claim that the number of crimes committed by Gypsies has grown considerably. 

The widespread prejudice against Gypsies is undoubtedly an impediment to improving their lot by way of affirmative action. As it now stands, the population thinks that too much money is spent on Gypsies who produce children only to be eligible for child support. Gypsy families indeed are very large, but this is the norm among underclass societies. I heard in today's news that the police force is seeking out Roma applicants. I seem to remember that earlier attempts were not successful, perhaps because the applicants couldn't meet the minimum standards. Hungarians have to learn that at the beginning the requirements must be lowered if they ever want to achieve integration and peace between Gypsies and non-Gypsies.

Aftermath of the night club murder

Nothing happens in Hungary that does not have political consequences. The lethal stabbing of a famous handball player was not just a tragic incident; it also became the center of a petty and unbecoming political feud. It was bad enough that once it became known that the perpetrators were Gypsies there was an outcry against "Gypsy crime." This sad event was also exploited for political gain. Fidesz went into high gear, attacking the government for not providing security for the citizens of the country. They claim that the police force is underfinanced, its size inadequate and, most importantly, it can't keep order. It commands no respect.

Unfortunately some of these accusations are not entirely unfounded although their statistical underpinnings leave something to be desired. Fidesz claims, for example, that the police are receiving 15 (sometimes this figure becomes 35) billion forints less for the 2009 fiscal year than they got a year ago. Actually the sum allotted for police work in 2009 is exactly the same as in 2008, but over the course of last year the police needed extra financing because of unforeseen (and hence unbudgeted) expenses. Just to give one example: all those demonstrations that needed new equipment, more policemen, and extra money. Most of these demonstrations, including the huge Fidesz open air gatherings, cost the police a great deal of money. If 2009 is as "busy" as last year (let's hope it won't be) then the police will receive extra money as needed. In fact, after the sad events in Veszprém the police force budget was increased by 3.5 billion. The response when this was announced on Sunday after the extraordinary cabinet meeting: "What good does the 3.5 billion do when they received 15 billion less in the first place?" One cannot win against people with an infinite talent for twisting the truth.

Most likely the Hungarian police could use twice as much money as they are receiving currently, but considering that the opposition is the most vocal critic of overspending it is interesting that any kind of savings is immediately criticized as "unacceptable." The claim that extra money spent on the police would result in budgetary reductions elsewhere doesn't make an impression. Everything needs more money, says the opposition.

I personally think that the problem is not so much one of money as what one might call police paralysis. For years now the policemen simply don't know what they are supposed to do. One day they are criticized because they are not tough enough and the next day they are called to task for being brutal. As some of the more outspoken government members argue, Fidesz has tried its best to weaken the Hungarian police force and now complains that the police are unable to keep order. The real attacks on the police came after October 23, 2007, when there were serious disturbances on the streets of Budapest. I watched a live broadcast of the events on the Internet and was surprised at the restraint of the Hungarian police while under physical attack. I watched with morbid fascination how the policemen retreated while thugs were throwing cobblestones at them. Hundreds were injured. More injuries among the police than among the rock throwers. Any other police force in Western Europe or in the United States in a similar situation would have been a great deal tougher. Yet "legal defenders of civil rights" close to Fidesz immediately began attacking the police for brutality. Krisztina Morvai, far right "defender" (by now a member of Jobbik), repeatedly told the world that thirteen people's eyes were shot out by rubber bullets. Proof? Unnecessary. She and Zoltán Balog, the great diplomat of the latest Slovak-Hungarian meeting, even went abroad to tell about the brutal Hungarian policemen and to ask for international condemnation. Some of the policemen were convicted in Hungarian courts (though they received suspended sentences) while one attacker after the other got off scot free. After that, it was not at all surprising that at the gay parade incident the policemen just stood by placidly while the anti-gay "gentlemen" spat on them. This is what happened to the Hungarian police force with Fidesz assistance.

But now Fidesz is demanding a tough police force that can keep order because "the government isn't doing anything." The party set up a "workshop" to outline a plan to introduce tougher laws and more effective police. They are promoting the "three strikes and you're out" policy some states in this country introduced. The third felony, life without parole. I just heard yesterday that prison overcrowding in California is so severe that about 170 thousand inmates should be let go. Well, somehow I can't see that happening in Hungary and not just because of the shortage of prisons. Such "innovation" flies in the face of the whole European justice system. Not only that, there is no way the parliament would vote for such a change in the criminal code.

Meanwhile, Viktor Orbán after a visit to László Sólyom announced that the number of crimes committed by Gypsies is growing. As we know, no ethnic statistics are kept. When another Fidesz politician was asked by a reporter where Orbán got this information, the only answer the Fidesz politician could come up with was that "the Miskolc police chief said so." Full circle, I'm afraid. 

A few crime statistics in Hungary

Luckily I've collected some Hungarian statistical yearbooks over the years and therefore have access to official historical crime statistics. When Tibor Navracsics, in the wake of the Veszprém murder, announced that this government is utterly incapable of keeping order, that people live in fear, that crime statistics are climbing dramatically, I was able to check his statistical claim. As usual, not a word of Navracsics's dire picture of the Hungarian situation is true.

Let's start with the happy 1960s and 1970s. During these decades the number of reported attacks against life and property was low. In 1965 there were only 121,161 cases, and a large percentage of these (80.4%) were solved by the police. Ten years later the situation didn't change much: about the same number of cases though only 78.9% of them were solved. In 1985 there was a noticeable jump: 165,816 reported cases and the police were able to solve only 68.2%. Three years later, in 1988, the number went up again to 185,344 and the percentage of crimes solved dropped again. From here on there was a steep rise in the crime rate while the percentage solved dropped to as low as 42.6% in 1994. In 1995 the number of cases was up to 502,0366. That was pretty much the situation in 1998 when the Orbán government was formed (1998: 600,621; 1999: 505,716). Nowadays the number is around 400,000, considerably lower than ten years earlier but still twice as much as in 1988. The big improvement is in the number of murders or attempted murders. While in 1994 there were 439 deaths and 514 in both 1997 and 1999, by 2003 the number was down to 228, in 2004 209, in 2005 164, and in 2007 154. By the way, the Hungarian trend in the total number of offenses follows the all-European Union trend. See graph:  

I found a publication of the Központi Statisztikai Hivatal (Central Statistical Office) published in November 2008 (interestingly in Miskolc) that gives some details about known crimes and their perpetrators. In Hungary there are no available statistics on national origin. Therefore we don't know, for instance, how many of the criminals were Gypsies. There are, however, statistics on the number of crimes broken down by region, by the age of the perpetrators, and by their educational attainment.

When it comes to regions, the lowest crime rate can be found in Central Hungary, closely followed by Southern and Western Transdanubia. The worst parts are the poorest regions: Northern Hungary and the North Great Plains. Miskolc, by the way, is situated in the Northern Hungarian region. Juveniles' share in criminal activities is much higher than their share in the population as whole and again juvenile crime is highest in the north-east parts of the country. The percentage of perpetrators with eight grades or under is very high among juveniles (it's of course possible that some of them are young enough to still be in school). Again, one doesn't know the ethnic composition of this group but one suspects that the number of Gypsies is high because they are the ones who are grossly undereducated.

When it comes to adult perpetrators the educational attainment is also very low. Again, the worst region is the Northern Great Plains where 1.3% cannot read or write and 68.4% finished only eight grades. Nationally, one in four crimes is committed under the influence of alcohol.

In 2007 24,669 persons were sentenced but only 30% of these actually served any time. The rest received suspended sentences. Here is the breakdown. As one can see, these sentences are mild, especially by American standards. Some people argue that these sentences are too lenient and that the punishments should be more severe. Then, they argue, the criminals would think twice before attempting armed robbery and the like. Others claim that severe punishment is no deterrent and they bring up the example of countries, including the United States, where severe sentences are meted out for crimes that just aren't that serious. I am unable to take sides simply because I don't know enough about the subject.

One thing is becoming clear as far as the Veszprém murder is concerned. The perpetrators were no poor Gypsies living in some God-forsaken village in a hut but well off people living the lives of criminals. It is very possible that they committed more crimes against their fellow Gypsies than against anybody else. A few hours after I wrote my last blog I learned that actually there were three suspects. Two of them were caught by the evening close to Graz, Austria. One of them, Sándor Raffael, is suspected of the actual murder of Marian Cuzma. Iván Sztojka whose picture could be found on www.iwiw.hu is still at large. The police are offering one million forints to anyone who can provide reliable information on his whereabouts.

The latest trouble on the Gypsy front

Saturday night the members of the Veszprém handball team decided to have a celebratory night out. One of their colleagues, Gergő Iváncsik, and his wife had just had a baby. They picked a bar/disco sometimes called Skorpió, sometimes Patrióta. They rented a separate room in the cellar for the gathering, but occasionally the handball players left to join the others on the dance floor on the ground floor. Their celebration soon turned into a nightmare.

The day before a young man from Enying (Fejér county) exchanged some harsh words with F.B., a well known thug in town. This man most likely was Iván Sztojka. Sztojka wanted to retaliate against F.B., this time with a show of force. He enlisted a group of fifteen or twenty friends and relatives who went to Veszprém in search of F.B.

They first went to the bar and ordered drinks, but F.B. wasn't there. For whatever reason, they decided not to pay their tab. The barmaid demanded that they settle up. In response, they grabbed her by the hair and banged her head a couple of times on the counter. According to some reports she broke her jaw. At this point some of the handball players came to the girl's assistance. A fight ensued, during which one of Sztojka's cohorts smashed a chair on the head of Zarko Sesum, a Serbian player. He was the luckiest of the three players. The attacking group either forced two of the players outside or they were foolish enough to follow them, but by then knives were drawn. Marian Cozma, a Romanian player, received a mortal stab wound directly through his heart while Ivan Pesic, a Croatian who tried to help Cozma, was stabbed in the back. As a result, he lost one of his kidneys. Cozma is dead, Sesum and Pesic are in the hospital.

Well, this horrific event has two broader consequences. First, in the sports world this handball team was very promising. Cozma, for example, was a member of Romania's national team. The club is famous for recruiting promising youngsters from all over. As the coach tearfully announced, he just lost half his team. In a week or so they were supposed to play against Spain. The other problem is that the alleged perpetrators are Gypsies. This brutal incident happening only a few days after the Miskolc fiasco is most unfortunate. There were demonstrations already not only in Veszprém but in other towns as well. Thousands gathered and, just as in Miskolc, they were not there only to mourn the dead. The Magyar Gárda (Hungarian Guard) also made an appearance. Comments written in response to articles chronicling the events are uniformly fiercely anti-Gypsy. Even in left-liberal papers. I don't want to repeat them here but they are either outright racist (genetic garbage) or express total distrust of the Hungarian police force. One commentator hoped that ordinary citizens would get hold of the two suspects because that will be the only way they get their deserved fate. Lynching, I guess.

By this afternoon the police identified two men, both Gypsies, as the alleged perpetrators. One is Iván Sztojka from Enying whom I mentioned earlier and the other is Sándor Raffael from Sárbogárd. One of the enterprising readers of the news already discovered that Sztojka's name can be found on www.iwiw.hu  (international who's who of Hungarians). I checked it out and although the picture on iwiw is small it bears a suspicious resemblance to the police photo of our Sztojka. The pictures of the two men can be seen here: http://tinyurl.com/cny349 The bloodthirsty Hungarian who was hoping that the irate public would find the two men might be frustrated because it seems that Sándor Raffael was already caught, mind you not by the Hungarian but by the Austrian police. Sztojka is still at large.

The police might be able to round up the guilty ones but that won't resolve the real problem of the growing anti-Gypsy sentiment. Tibor Draskovics, the minister in charge of the police who already had enough trouble in Miskolc, is now confronted with a new crisis. He rushed to Veszprém where he tried to explain that crime is universal and that it is unfair to blame the Gypsy community as a whole, but it is becoming clear that this kind of explanation will not satisfy the Hungarian public. Draskovics late at night on MTV (Szólás szabadsága) admitted that something must be done to foster Gypsy integration. But even if there were tons of money (and there isn't) a serious effort in this direction might take two or three generations. Does Hungarian society have that much time? It is enough to think of the U.S. effort to integrate African Americans. Although in the last forty or fifty years the United States has made great strides in developing an educated black middle class, the country's problems are still not over. There remains a large black underclass in this country. And the Hungarian Gypsies' situation today is far worse than the American situation fifty years ago. Put it this way, Hungary has a lot problems and they are not just financial.