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Free Market — and Free Speech — Spells Trouble for the Roma
*** Hungary’s Roma community are discriminated against in employment, education and housing and are always at risk from physical and verbal attacks. And their lot, is deteriorating, writes Bob Dent from Budapest ***
THE fall of communism and the introduction of a market economy has not improved life for Hungary's 500.000 Gypsies, the country's largest — and worst treated — minority.
If anything, life has got worse.
Roma, as they call themselves. are the last to be hired for new Jobs and are usually the first to be fired, making them particularly vulnerable in a time of economic upheaval.
Unemployment among Roma Is more than 60 per cent, about five times the national average, and in some areas outside the capital their unemployment rate nears 100 per cent.
Even the greater freedom of speech which has come with political and economic liberalisation has proved problematic: it has allowed space for the, ■^ublte4kfdcU!aUbh'W preWbbdiy1 concealed racist ideologies.
Hate-speech has been accompanied by outbreaks of physical violence.
A recent report by the group Human Rights Watch commented: "Roma remain on the periphery — isolated, despised and denied effective participation in the process that is shaping the new Hungary and the role of minorities within it."
It has been like this since Gypsies first appeared in Hungary in the late 14th century. Prejudice against them stems mostly from their determination to maintain their own traditions. including their own baptismal. marriage and burial practices; their own language, Romany: and their often mobile life-styles.
Today, barely half of Hungarian Roma finish basic schooling and a large percentage of those have experienced only "remedial" classes. Prejudice is widespread, as is discrimination in housing and work.
Apart from the musicians of
the gypsy bands. Roma, while forming about five per cent of the population, are in effect absent from Hungary's political, academic, business and social life.
Social, educational and cultural projects have been launched in the past to tackle the situation, but the Foundation for Self-Reliance is the first to take a head-on approach to economic issues by funding and encouraging income-generating schemes.
"Banks are very reluctant to extend loans to gypsies." says Foundation director Anna Csongor. "However, we aim to tackle the problem with the use of microcredits."
The use of small-scale credit — much smaller than banks will bother with — has been copied from the work of a Polish microcr^dit ipsUt^tipn., tl
The combination of grants and interest-free loans goes to grassroots organisations with an elected leadership. The current rate of loan repayment is around 75 per cent.
Most projects are agricultural. The collapse of heavy industry and the disappearance of subsidised support, such as cheap hostels, has undermined the travelling lifestyle of many gypsy workers. This has forced them to seek a means of subsistence within their village communities, which are usually found in the poorest regions of the country.
Tomato production, pig-breeding. corn and herb production are typical Foundation-financed activities. A network of activists, both Roma and nonRoma, act as monitors and alm to establish mutual trust between donor and recipient.
Among the successes claimed by the Foundation is a project in the village of Pisko. near the southern border with Croatia.
"Corn and potato production
here has been economically successful", says Csongor. "And as a side-effect, the local leader of the project is going to stand for village mayor. He has developed his capacities and people trust him. Gypsies are in the majority in the village, but traditionally mainly non-gypsies are mayors in gypsy villages."
The Foundation, founded in 1990 to promote civic initiatives in the “new Hungary", has received funding from several large grant-giving bodies, and is a past winner of the Right Livelihood Award (the so-called Alternative Nobel Prize) for its "resolute defence of Hungary's Roma minority and effective efforts to aid their self-development."
The Award citation praised its work for setting an example for activities elsewhere in Eu-
3 million to 8 million. They are believed to have originated in the Indian subcontinent (not from Egypt, though "Gypsy" is an English corruption of "Egyptian").
But while the Foundation’s Income and thus its activities are secure for the moment, the foreign backers have let it be known that they will not continue support indefinitely.
To survive, it will need local funding. And then It will itself run up against anti-gypsy prejudice.
Csongor and her colleagues have felt relatively safe from attack, but only because so far they have received very little Hungarian money.
"Attitudes In society towards Roma are getting worse." says Csongor. "If we support gypsies, then gypsies themselves are blamed for being supported, and we are accused of over-protecting them."
— GEMINI NEWS
BOB DENT'is a British freelance Journalist who has lived in Hungary since 1986.