Hate Crime

A 45 year-old Roma woman was shot dead, her 13 year-old daughter severely wounded by unknown attackers in Kisléta during the night of Sunday/Monday. (Kisléta, with its 1 900-strong population, lies 60 km from Tiszalök and 30 km east from Nyíregyháza). Following the murder, Hungarian National Police High Commissioner József Bencze doubled the reward offered for information about the identity of the criminals involved in attacks against Roma, stated the Hungarian National Police. The 100 million Hungarian Forint reward is the highest in the history of Hungarian criminology (the reward was upped for the last time on April 25th by the High Commissioner, to 50 million Hungarian Forint). The National Investigation Office took over the investigation of the crime committed in Kisléta on Monday at dawn.

The woman was shot by pellet gun in one of the last houses of a street lying at the edge of the village. The bullets hit her on her chest, head and arm. Her daughter was wounded on the neck and arm and was transported to András Jósa Hospital in Nyíregyháza.

Combat 18's message, broadcast by text and email all over Northern Ireland last week, was hate-filled and menacing:

"Romanian gypsies beware beware
Loyalist C18 are coming to beat you like a baiting bear
Stay out of South Belfast and stay out of sight
And then youse will be alright
Get the boat and don't come back
There is no black in the Union Jack
Loyalist C18 'whatever it takes'."

The rhyming racist warning has been picked up on mobile phones and computers across loyalist areas of the north of Ireland since the start of last week when the province hit the world headlines again for all the wrong reasons.

This weekend 110 Romanians, including many small children, some as young as six weeks, are under armed police guard at a secret location in Belfast. Seven days ago the 20 families were driven out of several properties on the edge of the city's university district, victims of a racist gang which repeatedly attacked their homes over a number of days. Many of the immigrants, almost all exclusively from the Roma community, have said they want to return home rather than stay in a city being branded as the racist capital of Europe.