Severe Human Rights Violations Against Roma in Miskolc, Hungary

The HCLU is one of the six human rights NGOs calling on Hungarian authorities to fully investigate an incident at a school in Konyár on 5 September, and the police response. A busload of football fans stopped outside the school, which has a large majority of Roma pupils, and which had to dismiss a teacher for racist comments earlier this year. What happened next is unclear, as police reports differ greatly from eyewitness reports.

The Chamber of Judge Miszori has a difficult task. On August 6, it will announce its first instance judgment in a criminal procedure against the four suspects who were accused of carrying out a series of racist murders in 2008 and 2009 against Hungarian Roma.

Definite uneasiness can be felt on the third day of the trial on whether or not to disband the Militiamen Association for a Better Future (MABF), a group responsible for marching and causing fear during the spring of 2011, in the small Hungarian village of Gyöngyöspata. The presiding judge, Erika Mucsi is uncertain of the difference between the MABF and the Roma Civil Rights Movement (RCRM), but this isn’t the greatest cause for alarm. Instead of disbanding the group responsible for systematic racial misconduct, she studies the correlation between structural unemployment and crime committed in order to provide food and heating. The HCLU reports on the trial - the mood and the spirit of the trial was completely absurd, as if it had nothing to do with the events in Gyöngyöspata.