Saturday, April 23, 2011

Hungary / Roma-Gypsies

"Some 277 women and children were moved out in a convoy of busses." (AP)
Gipsies Flee as Far-Right Open "Training Camp"
By Matthew Day
The Telegraph, April 22, 2011
"Nearly 300 gipsies have been evacuated out of a remote Hungarian village where a three-day, far-Right 'training camp' has been set up. The gipsies, fled Gyongyospata, 50 miles from Budapest, after members of Vendro, a paramilitary group arrived. The Hungarian Red Cross said it was the first time it had evacuated Hungarian civilians threatened by paramilitary activity since the Second World War. The far-Right Jobbik party won 17 per cent of the vote in a general election in the country last year. Some 277 women and children were moved out in a convoy of busses Janos Farkos, deputy leader of the Hungarian Roma Rights Organisation, said that the village's Roma population had felt 'terrorised' by the presence of the far-right activists. 'The children had to be sent away this weekend because they wouldn't be able to sleep at night,' Mr. Farkos said. Vendro's website said it expected 'all those who loved their country and wanted to learn basic self-defence and military training' to attend. The camp and evacuation will stoke already simmering tensions between Hungary's Roma community and the vocal and popular far-right movements such as Jobbik, an ultra-nationalistic party that campaigns with a hard-line Roma policy and which scooped 17 per-cent of the vote in last year's general election."
[n.b. This is the complete text of the dispatch. Interesting that only women and children were evacuated. Was that a decision of the community, or the Red Cross?]

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Please be constructive in your comments. - AJ