Hungarian Spectrum

Law enforcement in Hungary

A local paper (Somogyi Hírlap) asked its readers which organization they trust more, the Hungarian police force or the Hungarian Guard. Eighty percent opted for the latter. Of course, this is not a representative sample but it says a lot about the radicalization of Hungarians and the lack of respect accorded the Hungarian police. I might add that this sudden concern over the lack of security and the alleged growth of criminal activities is somewhat surprising because in reality crime  hasn't increased of late. On the contrary, in the last few years it has substantially decreased in all categories. However, the public thinks otherwise. This has been especially true in the last two years.

Perhaps it started with the brutal murder of a school teacher in Olaszliszka who inadvertently hit a child who ran in front of his car. Nothing happened to the child but the extended Roma family attacked him and in front of his two daughters beat him to death. (See "Verdict in Olaszliszka [Hungary] murder," May 30, 2009) And the public's perception of a "crime wave" was further reinforced in February 2009 when a well known handball player, Marian Cozma, was stabbed to death, also by Gypsies. These two terrible incidents further inflamed the intense anti-Gypsy sentiment among the population. According to several opinion polls about 80% of Hungarians have very negative opinions of Gypsies whose situation has become close to hopeless in the last twenty years, ever since the mammoth Hungarian state factories where they worked mostly as unskilled workers closed their doors. They live in villages where work is practically nonexistent and in any case they are widely discriminated against in the job market. Large families live on state assistance and some of them help themselves to the possessions of their neighbors. These are petty crimes that the police refuse to investigate. According to the rules and regulations, if the value of the loss is less than 20,000 Ft (€73 or $100) the police simply don't bother. However, some old folks in a God-forsaken village somewhere in northeast Hungary don't consider the disappearance of a few chickens or a piglet a small thing at all. They naively think that if the mayor of the village calls in the Hungarian Guard and the Guard frightens the living daylights out of the Gypsies, then the thieves will be afraid to repeat their evil deeds. Problem solved. Well, we know it is not that simple.

There used to be all sorts of cruel police jokes in Kádár's Hungary about the inordinate stupidity of Hungarian policemen. Today the requirements for admission to the force are much higher. I wrote earlier about the woes of the Hungarian police force and gave a detailed description of the educational background necessary to become a police officer. ("The Hungarian police force," March 1, 2009) In fact, the training program for candidates is unusually long. Two solid years. I checked a few police academies in this country and found that they demand only 15-20 weeks of training. Whether Hungarians need two years to become a police officer I don't know. Most likely not.

There are also lots of complaints that there are not enough police, but as far as I know there are over 42,000 employees of the Hungarian police force, which is considered to be more than adequate. However, looking at the Magyar Statisztikai Zsebkönyv (Hungarian Statistical Handbook), I ascertained that about 10,000 of these people are not policemen but civil servants who sit at their desks all day long. Another problem is that according to rules and regulations all police, even traffic cops, must serve in pairs. This is not the case in most other countries. Thus the number of cops on the beat might actually be quite low. However, there is something called "polgárőrség" (citizen guards) who are supposed to assist the police in patroling public places. I think in the United Kingdom they are called "police civilians." These people are volunteers who receive no remuneration. Their number is high: 88,000. The police chief is now considering the option of allowing a citizen guard to replace one of the two policemen patroling the streets or checking traffic violations. There are some people who would further raise the number of citizen guards and make them salaried employees. The police leadership is also thinking of enticing retired policemen to reenter the force. A Hungarian police officer can retire at a relatively early age with a handsome pension. Most of them also work in their "retirement" at well paying jobs, and therefore my feeling is that it will be difficult to convince them to return to full time work for the Hungarian police where salaries are low.

In my earlier blog I mentioned an article written by two law professors specializing in law enforcement who argued that the centralized Hungarian police system is an impediment to good police work on the local level. A policeman should be a native of the town or village where he serves. Moreover, local authorities know the law enforcement needs of the locality better than someone sitting in Budapest. So the Hungarian police force should be completely reorganized. I can't quite see the current top brass, the Országos Rendőrfőkapitányság (National Police Chief Captaincy), giving up all its powers and passing them on to local--municipal and county--authorities. However, perhaps a combination of the two systems might work. Apparently the legal foundation for establishing such a system is already in place. In the 1990 law establishing local governments there is half a sentence about "keeping order in public places" as one of the duties of local governments. That provision, according to some people, including the police chief, might enable local authorities to establish their own police force with some central financial assistance. The name would be "települési őrség," meaning simply municipal police, but Fidesz immediately labelled them "Red Guards" which is, of course, total nonsense. Especially since most of the localities are in Fidesz hands or in the hands of the so-called "independents" about whom I just wrote.

How do Hungarian policemen strike visitors? Their uniform is a bit casual but this seems to be the trend everywhere. I read somewhere that even in the United Kingdom a couple of years ago helmets were exchanged for baseball caps in certain localities. So it is not the baseball cap that is the problem. The uniform doesn't look half bad on the attached picture. On the streets, however, they look shabby. I don't know how many uniforms they get and who is in charge of their laundering but their clothes look crumpled. Moreover, the cops don't set a good example by smoking on duty and throwing cigarette  butts on the pavement. Perhaps policemen shouldn't look like the military, with perfectly pressed uniforms and shined shoes or boots. But somehow they don't look like professional crime fighters; their uniform looks more like that of an unkempt FedEx driver.

By the way, when I was looking at the web site of Kiskunlacháza the other day, I discovered that in that town of 9,000 there was no resident policeman prior to the murder of the fourteen-year-old local girl. The enterprising mayor immediately demanded and received a police force--eight policemen and a police car as well. Whether crime statistics warrant such a large force I have no idea. (As a point of comparison I live in a town of 4,500 last year voted "the best little town in Connecticut"; we have no local police, only one resident state trooper.)

And one more related topic. József Bencze, the national police chief, has an entirely different interpretation of yesterday's verdict in the Hungarian Guard case from István Lövétei who spoke yesterday on József Orosz's program. Bencze, who has a law degree, in consultation with constitutional lawyers came to the conclusion that the police have the right to disperse members of the dissolved Hungarian Guard if they appear in uniform. Tomorrow might be the first test case. Earlier a group of extremists applied for a permit to demonstrate on July 4 in front of parliament to protest the arrest of György Budaházy, the alleged mastermind behind the Arrows of Hungarians. The police refused to grant permission, claiming that such a demonstration would impede the work of the legislators. However, that didn't deter the organizers, who are still planning to demonstrate. The members of the Hungarian Guard, fuming over yesterday's verdict, are planning to join them. In fact, they are organizing the protest on their website. The Hungarian police also made clear on their website that they will disperse any such demonstration; see http://www.police.hu/tlz .

The police chief sounded very determined. One had the feeling that yesterday's verdict emboldened the Hungarian police who in the last few years had become completely demoralized. What will happen tomorrow? Hard to predict. I didn't particularly like the comments accompanying the article that appeared in Népszabadság about tomorrow's "non-demonstration." They were belligerent and ugly. They predicted civil war. However, I'm an optimistic sort. Most likely that the police will defend the square in front of parliament with a very large force and perhaps some of the extremists will think twice before going against them. And if not, and if they are injured in any way, they will soon have their spokeswoman in Brussels in the person of Krisztina Morvai.

Kiskunlacháza and the Hungarian National Development Agency

Yesterday I wrote about the political makeup of Kiskunlacháza, a town of 9,000 south of Budapest on the left bank of the Danube. I mentioned the very enterprising mayor who is making a name for himself in certain circles with his fierce anti-Gypsy rhetoric. The town of Kiskunlacháza is becoming notorious in other respect as well: Mayor József Répás and the town council might not have been entirely truthful when they applied for millions of forints from the National Development Agency for a school project. The National Development Agency is in charge of distributing monies received from the European Union as part of the convergence program.

First of all, I must say that Répás and the town council have spared no energy in writing grant proposals to get as much money for the town as possible. According to the website of the National Development Agency the town received altogether 375,552,750 Ft. for four different projects. Two of these involve the town's elementary school. According to the website of Kiskunlacháza there are 900 children attending the school's eight grades. The school's name is Kiskunlacháza-Áporka Általános Iskolai Társulás, indicating cooperation between the larger Kiskunlacháza and the nearby village of  Áporka (population 1,100). The school has five different "campuses." The upper four grades study on the "main campus" on Munkácsy Square while the lower grades are situated at two different locations in town. In addition there is a "special branch" for 41 students with learning disabilities. Apparently most of these students are Gypsies. In addition there is another school building in Áporka. The whole system has only one principal; the other four "campuses" are headed by assistant principals.

Although for the two school projects the town received 272,793,000 from the National Development Agency the town had to come up with an additional 318 million forints, which it didn't have. It had to borrow 284 million forints. Apparently Kiskunlacháza sometime in the 1990s was close to bankruptcy, and some people in town were afraid that history might repeat itself. Especially because the project seemed to be too grandiose for a town of Kiskunlacháza's size. The town asked for grants for two different projects: (1) to renovate the existing building on Munkácsy Square and to build a new "multifunctional" gymnasium and (2) to make the building handicapped accessible. This latter project is laudable in a country where the disabled have a very rough time. Almost nothing is wheelchair accessible. There is only one problem: the Kiskunlacháza local government in their proposal claimed that the school had 41 disabled students. Does that number sound familiar? And from here on I'm relying on Krisztina Ferenczi's articles in Népszava and Népszabadság. Ferenczi is an investigative journalist who has done a lot work uncovering political corruption cases. Mind you, in Hungary such revelations virtually never have any consequences.

The first time Ferenczi wrote about the megaproject was on January 27, 2008, in Népszava. She reported that Répás and his friends misled the National Development Agency when they claimed that there were 41 children in wheelchairs and therefore, predicted Ferenczi, it was possible that the Agency would simply not pay up. Répás claimed that Ferenczi was lying; he, in turn, demanded that Népszava print a correction. However, the paper was in possession of a document that proved that Ferenczi was telling the truth: Kiskunlacháza claimed that "by making the building handicapped accessible the town will be able to provide equal opportunity to the disabled children of the school (41 persons)." At that point Répás backed down and claimed that that was no more than "a slip of the pen." Moreover, he added that "disabled" is a word that encompasses all sorts of handicaps, including learning disabilities. Therefore there was no problem with the application and the grant.

But there are a lot of problems because the 41 "disabled" children (in reality, children in special education classes) are housed one and a half kilometers from the school in a one-story building. They will in no way benefit from the special ramps, the wheelchair accessible bathrooms, and the elevator installed at the central school. They will not be able to use the gargantuan "multipurpose" gym that can be divided up into three separate units. Here is a picture of the newly opened gym. It is quite a project for a small town. In addition they renovated the old part of the building: new windows, a new furnace, and--oh yes--an additional story built on top of the existing structure. In the new addition there are rooms for the school psychologists, for doctors' offices, separate rooms for aerobic exercises and body building "in order to expand the space for those with handicaps." The gym itself has six fixed and six movable sets of bleachers, a tennis court, a basketball court, and a separate area for badminton. The new courtyard can hold 1,000. More kids than in the whole town schooled at five different locations.

Krisztina Ferenczi visited the building site again a few months ago and wrote another article, also in Népszava (February 26, 2009), in which she elaborated on her attempts to get more information from the National Development Agency. After all, any person who is not a brainless robot should notice reading the town's application for the project that there is something wrong here. How can there be 41 handicapped children in one school district? Moreover, how it is possible that the employee in charge of the project doesn't bother to take a look at the town and its school? How can it be that this official doesn't want to meet these handicapped children? But no, it seems that this person was not interested. His only answer to Ferenczi was that "an applicant cannot lie because such untruth has consequences." Well, this was vague enough.

The official opening took place on June 26. Even Imre Szabó, minister in charge of the environment and waterways, was there. A "millennial flag" was given by the president of the Pest County Council. Oh, the good old days when Fidesz was passing out millennial flags in 2000 at the celebration of the one-thousandth anniversary of Hungarian statehood. The churches that didn't attend the twentieth anniversary of the opening of the iron curtain were out in full force to bless the new building. The National Development Agency also justified the project by declaring learning disabilities a handicap, so all's well. Meanwhile the 41 so-called handicapped children will never see the inside of the swanky gym. They exercise during the winter in the corridors and during spring and fall in a dusty courtyard.

The town now just has to pay back the 284 million forint loan. What will happen to the segregated Gypsy kids? I don't think that too many non-Roma in town care.

A return to Kiskunlacháza--An extreme right locality in Hungary

A couple of days ago I briefly mentioned that after a seven-month manhunt the police found the murderer of a fourteen-year-old girl in Kiskunlacháza, a small town south of Budapest. And I'm not using the word "murderer" instead of the customary "alleged murderer" unadvisedly. József P. not only confessed but the police found the missing belongings of the murdered girl in his house: an ID, her cell phone, a necklace, and a purse. All hidden, of all places, inside a vacuum cleaner. And yes, the DNA sample found in the semen matched. Also, the pubic hair that was reddish. The experts pretty well knew months ago that the perpetrator was most likely not a dark-skinned, brown-haired Gypsy but someone who is blue-eyed with reddish-blond hair.

This is a terrible blow to the so-called "independent" mayor of Kiskunlacháza who has made political hay out of his repeated accusations that the murderers (plural) were Gypsies. A whole gang of them. In fact, ever since last November when the murder took place, he has been doing nothing else but inciting the inhabitants of this town of 9,000 against the local Gypsies in particular and against Gypsies in general. The mayor is József Répás, who politically identifies himself as "independent" as do nine others on the town council. Among the thirteen-member council there is only one MSZP member and three who ran on the Fidesz ticket.

It is customary to run as "independent" in villages or smaller towns where everybody knows everybody and where the person means more to the electorate than party affiliation. Répás's predecessor was also an independent as were most of the council members. The lone MSZP member seems to be popular because he is reelected time and again. Learning a little bit about the town I wonder who voted for him because Kiskunlacháza's inhabitants seem to be strongly attracted to the right. Not the moderate right but its extreme variety. It is true that at the European parliamentary elections the voter turnout in town was low (34.95%) but Jobbik did extraordinarily well: 24.6% while MSZP received only 11.89%. It is enough to look at the town's website to realize that this is Jobbik country. Perhaps more than the 25% who voted for Jobbik a few weeks ago would indicate.

Anyone who would like to get a feel for the mood of the town should take a look at the video available on the town's web site http://www.kiskunlachaza.hu/. The video records the speech the mayor delivered at a town meeting on May 11. First of all, the fairly large auditorium was full. All seats were occupied and those who couldn't find a seat had to stand in the aisles. The mayor is a good-looking guy and a fairly decent speaker. At least he seems to have grabbed the attention of his audience. I am actually wondering when Gábor Vona or Krisztina Morvai will get in touch with him and put him in a top leadership role in Jobbik because his message is identical to that of their party. He told his audience that it is time to tell the truth instead of the "insidious hypocrisy" that exists in the country. In plain language, let's expose the unbearable situation that exists with the Gypsies in Hungary. (Unbearable, of course, for the non-Gypsy Hungarians.) Forceful steps must be taken because "otherwise we will all perish." The town council decided that no financial assistance will be given to those families whose children "terrorize teachers and everybody else." Families who don't teach their children to behave "should leave town." Well, that was very popular. A long rythmic applause greeted the pronouncements. The audience also loved the idea that children who don't behave will be thrown out of all the schools in town. The speech went on in this vein for about twenty minutes. It is clear that Répás, who is apparently very popular in town, has pinned his political career on Gypsy bashing.

So it's no wonder that the discovery that the murderer wasn't a Gypsy came as an unwelcome piece of news to Répás and his followers in Kiskunlacháza. The television stations interviewed not only the police chief of Pest County whose team was responsible for finding our red-headed murderer but also the mayor. In those interviews Répás doubted the police's findings that József P., the non-Roma, was alone responsible for the murder. He had to have accomplices and of course these accomplices had to have been Gypsies. Répás told his audience that the whole town is convinced that József P. couldn't have acted alone. It doesn't matter what the police say. Actually after reading a few pages of the local paper "A mi ujságunk" (Our newspaper), one could tell ahead of time that if the final result is not what the right-wingers expect, these people will turn against the police. Gyula Budai, a Fidesz member of the town council, last December wrote an open letter to the undersecretary of the ministry in charge of the Hungarian police. He accused the socialists of "demoralizing the police force." The police "are silent because you don't allow them to tell the truth." I wouldn't be at all surprised if Mr. Budai wrote another open letter to the government, contending that they forced the police to lie and arrest the wrong man while the guilty Gypsies are still loose.

Many telltale signs of the Hungarian extreme right can be found in Kiskunlacháza's local newspaper, a publication of the town council. One tipoff is that the newspaper has published a whole series of articles about Kazakhstan. The extreme right is fascinated by the Kazakhs whom they consider to be close relatives of the Hungarians. Another telltale sign is that the paper claims to be a newspaper of culture, public life, entertainment, and "guardianship of tradition." On July 1, 2007, I wrote about the "lunatic fringe" who call themselves guardians of tradition. The most incredible theories circulate about the origins and early history of the Hungarians in these circles. It seems that one of these guardians of tradition is active in local politics. Perhaps even a member of the Kiskunlacháza's town council. The town's paper began publication in 1991 but it has been available on the Internet only since March 2008. So I don't know how long the falsification of history has been part and parcel of Kiskunlacháza's local governmental politics. Just to give you an idea of the kind of nonsense  being promulgated on public money here is one example. The paper introduces an Avar leader, Khagan Bayan, with the express purpose of somehow proving that the Avars were Hungarians. (Anyone interested in the relationship between the Avars and the Hungarians should take a look at András Róna-Tas's book available on the Internet Hungarians and Europe in the Early Middle Ages  http://books.google.com/books?id=I-RTt0Q6AcYC&pg=PA116&dq=avars+turkic&hl=en.) However, the Kiskunlacháza's local expert sends his readers to http://dobogommt.hu/dobogo/figyelem.php that describes itself as a "mythical historical site." And all this on public money.

There are other problems in Kiskunlacháza but this is another story. Perhaps tomorrow another side of town government under József Répás. That's not pretty either.

Hungarian Gypsies (Roma): Past and present (Part II)

As promised yesterday I'm moving on to the topic of Gypsies in the work force. Traditionally Gypsies were artisans and traders. In the eighteenth century some of the settled Gypsies worked as blacksmiths and were considered to be very skilled in ironwork. Others were traders, especially involved in the buying and selling of horses. And, combining these two interests, some were farriers, an important profession in those days. Most of them lived in villages in segregated sections, usually at the far ends of the usually one-street hamlets. This is still pretty much the case. Think of the serial attacks on Gypsy houses lately: almost all of the houses burned or shot at were situated at the far end of the village. The Gypsies owned no land although in the eighteenth century there were all sorts of attempts to apportion some land to them, coming from the estates of the local, usually noble, owner whose land was cultivated by the local peasants. Legislation regarding these land grants was even enacted, but in practice nothing came of it. Thus Gypsies had no agricultural experience in a country where more than 60% of the population was employed in agriculture as late as the 1930s.

In 1945 there was a radical land reform. The huge estates owned mostly by the nobility and the Catholic Church were cut up into very small strips of land and given to people who owned no land at all but who were employed as hired hands. Gypsies were excluded. I don't know what the thinking was behind this exclusion. Perhaps they argued that Gypsies who had never worked the land wouldn't be able to take advantage of the opportunity. Or since there wasn't enough land for the non-Gypsy needy they were simply left out. In any event the change that occurred in 1945 didn't make any difference as far as the Roma population was concerned.

As late as 1971 (again here I quote the data of István Kemény) two-thirds of the Gypsies lived in segregated Gypsy settlements. Two-thirds of their huts (one couldn't really call them houses) were made of adobe bricks (vályog in Hungarian). Forty-four percent of these huts had no electricity, only eight percent had running water, and only three percent had toilets. Thirty-two percent of these huts didn't even have outhouses!  Most of the houses Gypsies live in today in the countryside still have no running water; water must be brought from a well, often quite distant.

During the socialist period there was one major change from earlier times: 85% of the heads of households worked, mostly in factories either in Budapest or in bigger cities nearby. Admittedly, among Gypsy men only 11% were skilled and 10% semi-skilled workers. Thirteen percent of them were employed in agriculture, doing mostly heavy physical work. Some migration took place between the countryside and cities, but many Roma men shuttled between home and workplace either daily by train if the workplace was close enough or stayed in workers' hostels during the week and went home only for the weekend.

The full employment fostered during the socialist period concealed the fact that most of the work these people did was superfluous. In 1989-1990 came the moment of truth. Factories producing unwanted goods had to be closed, more profitable ones were sold to mostly foreign companies that brought along modern equipment. This meant that they needed fewer workers and those that they hired had to be skilled. An incredible number of workers lost their jobs. After 1990 only 29% of Roma men managed to retain their jobs in contrast to 64% of the non-Gypsies. And in the last twenty years there has been no improvement in this respect. By now perhaps even two or three generations of Roma families live on welfare. The youngsters don't see their fathers or grandfathers get up in the morning and go to work. Gypsy girls get pregnant at an early age and women in their thirties might already be grandmothers. They have large families as is usually the case with the less educated, but in the case of the Roma their love of children is legendary. The more children the larger the cash benefits from the government, but even so most Gypsy families live in poverty. Because most of them live in the countryside job opportunities are practically nonexistent, and they either have no transportation to travel to work or they can't afford the fare. And there is also discrimination against them. Gypsies complain that as soon as employers find out that the applicant is Gypsy suddenly the advertised job has already been filled.

Non-Roma resent the welfare payments doled out to able bodied men and women who are, according to them, simply lazy. They don't want to work. Mayors who are responsible for distributing some of the welfare money started demanding public work for assistance. That demand turned out to be illegal. Then the second Gyurcsány government tried to take the wind out of the sails of local potentates by introducing a public works program for the able bodied. What happened to this project I don't know because there was a change at the head of the ministry of social welfare after Gordon Bajnai became prime minister and I haven't heard anything about it since. The Orbán government tried to tie family assistance to school attendance, which I thought was a good idea. However, the socialists then in opposition attacked the legislation and after 2002 they abolished it. In the last few months of the Gyurcsány government the idea resurfaced, mostly to appease the non-Roma population and to reduce tensions. Again, lately I've heard nothing more about this plan either.

There are constant complaints about Roma thievery. Of course, not all Gypsies steal, but Jobbik and the Hungarian Guard introduced a new concept: "Gypsy crime." Liberals have been fighting this stigma. After all, they argue, there is no such thing as "Hungarian crime." Those who don't find the term objectionable claim that in police textbooks the term exists and describes petty thievery: stealing wood from the forest, taking fruit from other people's trees, stealing a couple of chickens at night from neighbors' yards. Apparently, the Hungarian police refuse to look into these petty crimes because they don't bother with any loss that is under 20,000 forints. And the resentment grows. With it the prejudice. A vicious circle. Jobbik and Hungarian Guard offer simple solutions: "we will keep them in line." They want to bring back the gendarmerie, a notorious force that was in charge of the countryside before 1945. Some people want to send them back to India. Actually, the European Gypsies are most likely from the area where today the Pakistani and American forces are battling the Taliban!

As we know from other examples, the integration of a fairly large group that is different looking is a difficult business. The integration of American blacks who in many ways were a great deal better off fifty some years ago than Hungary's Gypsies are today is still a work in progress despite the fact that United States has a black president. It takes time, targeted legislation, and a lot of money. Quite a few billions of forints were already spent without making a dent. Apparently, a large portion of this money never reached those who were supposed to benefit from it.

Once the economic crisis passes, the European Union should pay some attention to this question because after all there are many European countries with large and ever growing Roma populations. The problem is particularly acute in Eastern Europe where the concentration of Gypsies is the greatest. Unfortunately these former socialist countries have the least resources. Therefore perhaps western countries should come to the rescue, not just with money but perhaps by sending social workers and volunteers. I just read that Péter Balázs, the new foreign minister, had a meeting with Hilary Clinton yesterday and the two of them talked about the "Gypsy question." There might be some U.S. help, not necessarily financial. Perhaps American experience in integrating American blacks might be helpful. Help is sorely needed.

Hungarian Gypsies (Roma): Past and present (Part I)

A lot of people have been saying for a very long time that something must be done about the "Gypsy question." I put the word "question" into quotation marks because in Hungary the word "question" when preceded by the adjectival form of the name of an ethnic or religious group has a very bad ring. It all started in the late nineteenth century when antisemitic circles started talking about the "Jewish question" in Hungary. For some the "Gypsy question" is analogous to the "Jewish question." But thoughtful people realize that Gypsies not only should have the educational and employment opportunities afforded the rest of the Hungarian population but that a special effort has to be made to make these opportunities both attractive and attainable.

But first, a digression into history, demographic and linguistic. The first time an attempt was made to gather information on Hungary's Gypsy population was in 1850 when demographers claimed that there were 140,000 Gypsies living in the Kingdom of Hungary. By 1893 their number doubled to 280,000. During the same period the country's population as a whole grew by only 30%. After Trianon many of the Gypsies ended up in Romania or Czechoslovakia, so Hungary's Gypsy population in absolute numbers decreased. However, by 1944 their estimated number was fairly high again: 200,000.

It was in 1971 that István Kemény began serious research on Hungary's Gypsies. In that year there were 320,000 people of Gypsy origin living in Hungary. Among these Gypsies 71% spoke only Hungarian; the rest were bilingual. In addition to Hungarian the bilingual Gypsies spoke Hungarian Romani (21%) or Romanian (8%). The bilingual Gypsies can be divided into three major groups: the Karpat, the Vlach (oláh), and the "beás" Gypsies. The Karpat Gypsies were the earliest immigrants in Hungary. They arrived in the fifteenth century and their language is the closest to various existing Indian languages or dialects. The Vlach (oláh) Gypsies came from Wallachia (today Romania), and during their wanderings they must have come in contact with Slavic people because they picked up a lot of Slavic words. Ninety percent of the Vlach Gypsies spoke the Lovari dialect; as far as I know this is the language they teach today to those who choose Romani as a foreign language. The third group within the bilingual Romas are the "beás" Gypsies. They spoke (and most continue to speak) the Romanian of the Bánát region (Voivodina, Serbia today) and they live in Transdanubia, especially in the county of Baranya. Originally they were woodworkers specializing in making wooden washtubs and wooden spoons that they sold at the weekly farmers' markets. The strictly Hungarian-speaking Gypsies are the descendants of the Karpat and Vlach Gypsies (though a small minority remain bilingual). By today 86.9% of the Gypsies speak only Hungarian.

In Europe there are 8.5-10 million Gypsies. In Hungary today their estimated number is between 600,000 and 700,000. In 1971 there were 320,000 Gypsies and by 1993 their numbers grew to 500,000. In 2006 they constituted 6% of the population; if the current demographic trends continue by 2030 Gypsies will constitute 10% and by 2050 15% of the population. In certain counties today, especially in the northeastern corner of the country (Szabolcs-Szatmár, Hajdú-Bihar, Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén, Heves, Nógrád and Békés) the Gypsy population is already close to 10%.  

End of linguistic and demographic digressions, though you're not yet spared historical comparisons. For the rest of this post I want to focus on education. In 1893 95% of the Gypsy population couldn't read or write. The MSZMP Central Committee in 1961 decided to tackle the Roma problem and introduced some measures that bore fruit (though it couldn't exactly be described as a bumper crop). To give some idea of the situation they faced, in a study done ten years later but reflecting the status quo in 1961 39% of Gypsies over the age of fourteen couldn't read or write and only 26% of Gypsies between the ages of 20 and 24 had finished eight grades. Moreover, 10% of this group had never gone to school. By contrast, by the 1970s and 1980s almost all Gypsy children were attending elementary school. In the 1970-71 school year 30.6% finished "general" school (that is, eight grades) and by 1985 43.7%. As a benchmark, in 1985 89% of non-Gypsies finished the compulsory eight grades. By the 1990s 45-50% of Gypsy children finished eight grades but by then 100% of non-Gypsies met this standard. In 1993 only 0.22% of Gypsies over the age of eighteen attended university. Today that number is about 2%. Two graphs will illustrate the disparity. The graph on the left shows the percentage of Gypsies attending high school from 1930 to 1980; the graph on the right shows the percentage of the population as a whole attending high school during the same period. A rather sad commentary. By today 80% of Gypsies finish eight grades, though not always by the age of fourteen. Twenty percent start high school but only 10% of them actually matriculate.

While increasing numbers of Gypsy children go to school, segregation within the school system has intensified. The main reason for this is that parents can choose the school their children attend. Basically non-Gypsy parents can pull their children from schools where the number of Gypsy students is growing. In 1991 only 32% of the schools were segregated; today that number is 61.5%.  The schools often invoke a variety of tricks to segregate Roma students from their non-Roma counterparts. A favorite is to put Gypsies into special classes for the retarded. The percentage of "retarded" children among the Gypsies is a staggering 23.2%. The number for the population as a whole is 3.6%.

Tomorrow I will continue this thread, expanding into the work world.

Verdict in the Olaszliszka (Hungary) murder

On October 5, 2006, a teacher of biology in a "general" school in Tiszavasvári was driving with his two young daughters (ages 5 and 13) from Szerencs toward Olaszliszka. All these places are in one of the poorest regions of Hungary--in the northeast corner of the country close to the Slovak and the Ukrainian borders. The percentage of the Roma population there is very high. In some places around 30%. Both in Olaszliszka (population 1,945) and in Tiszavasvári (population 13,000) about 20% of the population is Gypsy. As the teacher was driving through Olaszliszka a young Gypsy girl ran out of one of the houses right in front of his car. Luckily nothing really happened to the little girl. Szögi immediately stopped, but even before he could get out of the car the extended family of the girl surrounded him and dragged him out. Then the savage beating began. Eventually the older girl got out of the car and asked for help. At this point her father was still alive. The onlookers remained impassive. The two girls started running down the road and were eventually picked up by a car. An ambulance was sent but it was too late. It was after this brutal murder that the extreme right began its anti-Roma campaign.

Olaszliszka became a symbol for the extreme right. Ever since the murder it became a place of pilgrimage for different rightist groups, including, of course, the Hungarian Guard and the Goy Bikers. The bikers were there for the first anniversary. On the second anniversary the Goy Bikers, Jobbik, the Hungarian Guard, and the National Guard (Nemzeti Őrsereg) organized a torchlight possession. A huge police force managed to keep order but there have been numerous attacks on Gypsies in the village since. According to some, Olaszliszka is responsible for the organization of the Hungarian Guard. On the picture above one can see Szögi's older daughter with an escort on whose jacket is the map of Greater Hungary. They are standing in front of the monument erected at the site of the murder.

There was no question that the verdict would be severe. Eventually eight people had to stand trial, including the parents of the child who suffered no bodily injury as a result of the accident. The father, who was obviously the most heavily involved, received a life sentence. That means at least thirty years in jail. The mother, considered to be an accessory before the fact, received fifteen years. Four other adults received fifteen years each. In addition two of the accused were juveniles. They received ten years each, which they will have to spend in a juvenile detention center. All eight will have to pay court costs: 6.4 million forints. I doubt they have that much money. They are all appealing the verdict.

The judge, Attilia Czibrik, refused to consider the defense argument that the crime was committed in the heat of passion because, after all, the relatives knew that the child was fine. It was murder in the first degree. Lajos Szögi was beaten to death; in fact, he was lynched. The attackers' intention was not in question: they wanted to kill him.

But the judge opened up one avenue of appeal--the shoddy work of the police that made the prosecutor's job very difficult. And the defense lawyer for the parents (Dezső H. and his wife), knowing full well that his clients would be found guilty, during the course of the trial prepared the ground for an appeal. He complained about procedural mistakes on the part of both the judge and the prosecution. For instance, a youngster was called as a witness for the prosecution but was never informed of her right as a relative not to testify. And then there was the six-year-old boy who mysteriously surfaced only a couple of months ago as a witness and whose testimony was used against Mrs. Dezső H. According to other witnesses the culprit was not Mrs. Dezső H. but another relative whose child had been killed two years earlier by a drunk driver.

Most Hungarians are undoubtedly satisfied with the verdict. By Hungarian standards it is very severe. The Roma population most likely thinks that if the accused had been Magyars (i.e. not Gypsies) they would have received lighter sentences. Surely, there is no question that Lajos Szögi was beaten to death, but given the shoddy work of the police and the prosecutors some of the details of the crime might be subject to reasonable doubt.

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.