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As crisis deepens, Roma a powderkeg in Hungary
Wed Aug 12, 2009 8:41pm EDT
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By Marton Dunai
BUDAPEST, Hungary (Reuters) - Maria Balogh and her 13-year old daughter Ketrin were asleep at home last week when attackers burst in and shot the mother dead with pellet guns. It was the latest in a string of murders of Roma in Hungary.
The pain of economic downturn is exacerbating tensions and resentment toward minorities and immigrants across Europe and even in north Africa.
In Italy, a rise in illegal immigration is behind a law permitting citizens' patrols on the streets. About 100 Romanians quit Northern Ireland after attacks on their homes in June. And in Algiers, Chinese immigrant laborers and native Algerians fought with knives and bludgeons on August 3.
But in Hungary, both the crisis and the violence are particularly drastic. The country was the first nation in the European Union to turn to the IMF for help last year, and faces deep recession and mounting unemployment.
The economic slowdown has especially hurt the Roma, who account for 6 to 7 percent of the population and find it hard getting jobs even in prosperous times.
The crisis has reinforced social tensions, and the recent brutal attacks on the Roma have brought the country to the brink of open conflict, according to its president.
"We know that the situation is tense to the point of explosion," Laszlo Solyom told a news conference this week, urging Hungarians to feel compassion for Roma, or gypsies: more than half a dozen, including children, have died in recent violent attacks.
Balogh's daughter Ketrin is still in hospital with serious injuries after the August 3 attack in the village of Kisleta in eastern Hungary.
All over eastern Europe, the Roma population is significant and increasing in number. Public resentment is fierce.
"(The Roma) have long elicited this attitude, mainly through their own behavior, robberies, murders and all," Anna Molnar, 21, a fresh university graduate, told Reuters in Budapest.
"I know counter-examples too, some (Roma) work and make no trouble. But it's a vicious circle. Even they have a hard time getting jobs because of the way the rest of them behave."
Hungary's government forecasts the economy will contract by 6.7 percent this year and remain in recession next year. Tens of thousands of jobs have been lost in the economic crisis, and Roma in any case are unwelcome in many lines of work.
Less than a quarter of Roma work legally in Hungary, according to the last nationwide survey. In Slovakia, the government puts the figure below 10 percent.
"Employers seal the gates," said Istvan Szirmai, an official at Hungary's Labor Ministry. "They have the right to choose ... and they do not accept Gypsies."
A lack of jobs or access to proper education in the past few decades means a growing proportion of the Roma now form what researchers call a new underclass, where joblessness and poverty are extreme and hereditary. Continued...
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