by Michael Smith
BUDAPEST, Hungary - Arsonists set fire Tuesday to a village apartment of a Romani official in eastern Hungary, a region known for recent killings of Gypsies, according to the police in that region.
Peter Papp, chief of the Pest county police department said nobody was injured when a block of apartments in Tatarszentgyorgy was set on fire by an unidentified person, so the Hungarian news agency MTI reported.
The fire was not caused by an incident such as an electric wire fault, according to Mr Papp. The apartment belonged to a deputy head of the Pest Romani self-government.
In February, a Romani man and his son were shot dead and two other children seriously injured when they tried to flee their village house that was in flames.
Hungarian health authorities and fire brigade officials insisted at that time and still do so today that the father and his son died of suffocation when the fire, allegedly caused by a faulty electric wire, swept the house.
The authorities said two died in an accidental fire even though it was obvious both died of firearm wounds, MTI said.
The Romani community and other national minorities in Hungary has been a target of hatred and terror by locals for years.
Hungary has seen basically a resurrection of the Arrow Cross bar under a different name and the target of those Nazi thugs are nowadays again the Gypsy as the primary ones. It was the same in the 1930s to 1945. Here too the Rom were the first that were targeted, despite other claims, and I am referring here not just to Hungary.
We are seeing a repeat, so it would appear to me, of the 1930s and no one is batting an eyelid. Many speeches are given at the occasion of the “International Roma Day” but those are all but empty words.
The European Union keeps saying this and that and how they are for the minorities and also and especially for the Romani but the truth shows a completely different side. The supposed representatives of the People, who draw much of their salaries and funding from the Council of Europe, in other words the coffers of the EU, say very little and do even less.
When there was another time the current president of one of the organizations was very vociferous and was very much for direct action and for defending the People. But that was only as long as that gave political ammunition, it would seem.
Again the question: “so kerena?”
© M Smith (Veshengro), 2009
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