I posted this on Facebook in response to virtually everyone I know sharing the story about a Hungarian camerawoman, Petra Laszlo, kicking Syrian refugees. I should probably post it here too:
I’m seriously glad that so many of my friends are mad about this. You should also be mad that despite what the Canadian government claims, this is exactly the sort of abysmal treatment Roma people receive in Hungary every day. I know this is long as hell, but a lot of Canadians don’t seem to know about it, so please read it regardless.
We have our own refugee crisis in Canada.
We lifted visa requirements on new EU countries in 2008, so in 2009, Roma from Hungary started flocking to Canada. Not wanting to interrupt European trade negotiations by reintroducing visas, the Canadian government immediately started looking for ways to get rid of them. The first way was by designating Hungary as a ‘safe country’, despite the fact that as the refugees were arriving, 6 Roma were killed and 55 were injured in calculated attacks on their communities. The president of Hungary didn’t offer condolences. He said nothing.
The Jobbik party has been gaining membership and is currently the 3rd largest political party in the country. The founder/leader, Gabor Vona, also founded the Hungarian Guard, a paramilitary group created to, “Stop gypsy crime,” (which is also an integral part of Jobbik’s platform). They were forced to disband after repeatedly staging rallies in front of Roma homes in military uniform. A new version has popped up, they’ve started to work with other hate groups, and now in addition to just threatening Roma people, they’ve been creating military training camps. Gabor Vona wore the Hungarian Guard uniform his first day in Parliment.
In 2011, 2000 members of the Civil Guard, a paramilitary group that began when they decided the Hungarian Guard wasn’t radical enough, descended on a town and spent 2 months terrorizing its 450 Roma inhabitants. They brought dogs, lit torches, and whips. The mayor, a member of Jobbik, said they were doing nothing illegal. They went into schools and threatened students. The teachers threatened to invite them back in. Gabor Vona stated that he wanted to deploy similar groups nationwide. The residents had to be evacuated by the Red Cross. The government told the media that nothing was wrong, and that the Red Cross was bringing them on a planned Easter vacation.
In response to Jobbik’s popularity, Fidesz, the current ruling party, has started to go even further right of their initial platform. To put ‘further right’ into context, here’s a fun quote from Zsolt Bayer, one of the founders in the party:
“Whoever runs over a Gypsy child is acting correctly if he gives no thought to stopping and steps hard on the accelerator.”
More from him on how Roma shouldn’t be allowed to exist is available here.
In case you were wondering about the official party response, Fedisz said that they wouldn’t make a statement since he wasn’t speaking on behalf of the party at the time, but that anyone who spoke out against his article was “siding with the murderer” (a Roma man).
So what effects do these politics have on the general Roma population?
Roma women are forcibly sterilized. Children are being put into segregated, inferior school systems (and when those aren’t available, immediately sent to special education regardless of their abilities). They make up 3% of the population and 80% of the human trafficking victims. They’re subject to horrific living conditions, are denied adequate access to healthcare (their life expectancy is 10 years lower than other Hungarians, infant mortality rate is much higher, women are 3 times more likely to die of cancer), and are considered unhireable. Hate crimes are frequent, rarely reported, and when they are, they very rarely result in jail time.
We labelled them “bogus-refugees” and made it more difficult to apply, and faster for us to get rid of them. We also took away the standard healthcare and work visas afforded to other refugees. And we were fucking proud of it. Our immigration minister went to Hungary to tell them in person. Canada made pamphlets telling the Roma we could kick them out faster. Then we made a fucking billboard. The mayor of the town where they posted the billboard was very upset. Why? Because he didn’t want the Roma to come back.
They still came to Canada, despite our compelling billboard campaign. For this new/fast/confusing refugee process created specifically for them, they were assigned the shittiest imaginable lawyers. A stand-out in this field, Viktor Hohots represented over 5000 Roma refugees. He won about 1% of his cases. He fully admitted that he didn’t show up to court, didn’t submit or translate documents as evidence, and mixed up clients stories. Literally thousands of people were deported because of him. His punishment? A 5 month suspension.
But, at least a suspension is something. The RCC has been filing similar complaints about other lawyers for years with no response.
On the rare occasion that the plight of Roma refugees is brought up in the Canadian media, it’s always mentioned that a large percent of the refugees withdraw their applications, which is used to fuel the “bogus-refugee” trope. No one ever examines why they just leave. It turns out, it’s because we pay them to. The Canadian government has been telling Roma that they’ll be deported anyway, so they might as well take plane tickets and a few thousand dollars, and not have to deal with the repercussions. It’s not even a bribe, it’s an ultimatum. We’ve given out over 7 million dollars in this scheme.
But some Roma say no and take their chances. And then they’re deported en masse. Kids who worked hard to integrate are being pulled out of bed in the middle of the night, terrified, and sent back somewhere profoundly unsafe.
There’s recently (in the past few weeks) been mention in the Canadian media that the percentage of acceptance rates for Roma refugees this year are much higher. That’s because there are much fewer applications. Because Canada now has people on the ground in Hungary, screening them before they have the chance to get on a plane.
In closing, fuck Hungary, and also fuck Canada.
I know this is post is several years long, but here’s some further reading for anyone who’s interested:
No Refuge: Hungarian Romani Refugee Claimants in Canada (Osgoode Hall Law Journal)
Accelerating Patterns of Anti-Roma Violence in Hungary (The FXB Center for Health and Human Rights- Harvard)
Project: Gyongyospata (Pulitzer Center-Jeneen Interlandi)
This isn’t specific to Hungary, but is about anti-Roma sentiment throughout Europe:
Roma people in Europe in the 21st century: violence, exclusion,
insecurity (The European Association for the Defence of Human Rights)
