Hungary

The Roma festival in the Transylvanian town of Sibiu felt like a carefree affair – the cobbled square of the old quarter filled with music and talk and late summer sun.

Dozens of Gypsies had gathered to play and sing and to sell their pottery, jewellery and metalwork to locals and tourists in this town in central Romania, whose medieval heart was renovated for its stint as European Capital of Culture in 2007.

With only a few policemen keeping a relaxed eye on proceedings, this was about as good as relations get between Gypsies and their neighbours in Romania and across eastern Europe, where discrimination against the continent’s largest ethnic minority is the norm, and violence is on the rise.

Far-right parties from Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria won seats in the European Parliament in June, and extremist attacks on Roma have intensified, with one Hungarian gang suspected of killing six Gypsies and injuring several more in the last year alone.

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.

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.

In Hungary, fascist groups are targeting Roma gypsies, but the government seems to turn a blind eye on the problem of ethnic minorities, and offers no protection for them.

A cold and brutal crime has torn a young family apart. Robert and his five-year-old son were shot dead, and his two other children seriously injured when their home was attacked. A homemade bomb was thrown through the front door and immediately sent the entire house up in flames. The young family had just finished building their small but modern house.

Their only crime was being Roma gypsies.

Over 80 percent of people asked in a recent survey were prejudiced against the Roma, Nepszava daily said on Monday, quoting pollster Median.

Four fifths of the sample said that "Gypsies make no effort to fit into society."

Almost 60 percent of the respondents openly said that they thought "crime was in the blood of Gypsies," and 36 percent said that the Roma should be "separated from the rest of society".

The survey also established a correlation between citizens' political views and their attitude towards the Roma minority: the closer a respondent was to the far right, the more anti-Roma he was.

Median also noted that it was people of modest incomes in small villages that appeared the least intolerant of their Roma neighbours.

Hungary's Roma population is estimated at around 600,000. Only about 100,000 declared themselves to be ethnic Roma during the minority government elections in 2006, said the paper.