Violence

Source: Anthony Cronin

A racially motivated attack against a Roma mother and her baby in Ireland was caught on film by professional photographer, Anthony Cronin, he describes what took place:

A group of Roma Gypsy women some with children, bustling down the footpath in a hurried fashion passed me by. Then my ears caught the sound of Irish teenage girls behind me, four of them shouting the likes of “dirty bastards” “filthy fuckers” “fuck of back to where you came from” at the Gypsies and chasing them. I turned to observe the scene and seconds later over my head started to fly rotten fruit the Irish had picked off the ground. The Roma woman with the baby in the picture bravely stopped to challenge them after she was hit by some fruit. Shocked at this racism, but not expecting what was to happen, I reached for the camera that was hanging around my neck and focused on the brave Roma lady, thinking I might get an interesting shot of her emotion.

Relatives attend the funeral of Jeno Koka.

Hundreds of mourners attended Wednesday's funeral of a fifth Hungarian Gypsy shot dead in a series of killings police say may have been committed by the same group.

While police do not rule out racism, police have not yet determined a motive.

There have been at least seven similar attacks since July 2008 against Roma — as Gypsies often prefer to be called. All involved shotguns and firebombs and were carried out on the edge of small villages near a major highway.

Roma make up about 6 percent of Hungary's 10 million population and many are among its poorest and least educated citizens. Poverty among Roma has increased since the end of communism and the closure or privatization of the large state companies that guaranteed work.

But with unemployment and economic problems on the rise among all Hungarians and small but vocal extreme right-wing parties like Jobbik focusing on public security, Roma are becoming the scapegoats for Hungary's economic woes.

Romanians evacuating to the local Leisure Centre

On a piece of waste ground poisoned by toxic chemicals, a group of teenagers were indulging in an age-old ritual this week.

They were making a giant bonfire from old crates and timber stolen from derelict buildings.

When a huge pyre had been erected, the youths retired to admire their work from the ‘den’, a hut they’d built for their gang from scrap and furnished with sofas found dumped on the street.

There were even broken venetian blinds at the front of the hut, which twisted and moaned in the wind.

Next month, on July 11, the night before the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne — when Protestant King William of Orange defeated the Catholic King James in 1690 — the bonfire will be set ablaze.

Along with hundreds of other bonfires lit across Belfast that night, the flames are meant to remind the Catholic majority of that historic Protestant victory, and serve warning that Loyalists will still fight fire with fire if any attempt is made to separate them from British rule.

The Roma home that was attacked

A Molotov cocktail smashed through the window, then another, spreading flames and bits of broken glass across the foam mattress where Anna Sivacková slept with her husband and their 2-year-old daughter.

The burning liquid splashed over Sivacková's arm, as she was closest to the window. Her nightgown ignited instantly, and she struggled to tear it off as it scorched her skin. The couple's three other children, asleep in the same room, were awakened by her frantic screams to get out as quickly as they could.

Scared and confused, the little ones, instead, scrambled to find their grandparents in the next room, where the flames from a third Molotov cocktail had begun devouring the walls.

Vlasta Malá grabbed her frightened grandchildren and ran with them out the door. Out front, she spotted a dark-colored car stopped under the streetlight.

Robert Csorba and his 4-year-old son were killed as they tried to escape from their burning home.

Jeno Koka was a doting grandfather and dedicated worker on his way to his night-shift job at a chemical plant last week when he was shot dead at his doorstep. To his killer, he was just a Gypsy, and that seems to have been reason enough.

Prejudice against Roma — widely known as Gypsies and long among Europe’s most oppressed minority groups — has swelled into a wave of violence. Over the past year, at least seven Roma have been killed in Hungary, and Roma leaders have counted some 30 Molotov cocktail attacks against Roma homes, often accompanied by sprays of gunfire.

But the police have focused their attention on three fatal attacks since November that they say are linked. The authorities say the attacks may have been carried out by police officers or military personnel, based on the stealth and accuracy with which the victims were killed.