The
Zámoly Roma – the Road to Strasbourg
By
István Hell
In
the summer of 2000, the gypsy families known in Hungary and in the
international
press
as ‘the Zámoly Roma’ requested the European Court of Human
Rights seated in
Strasbourg
to make a statement to the effect that their fundamental rights were
violated
and
they were persecuted by government and local authority organs in
Hungary. They also
asked
the Court to state that there is a wide-spread anti-Roma atmosphere
in their
country.
WHAT
HAPPENED BEFORE
The
Family
Rudolf
Kolompár, the head of what was to become the Krasznai family, was
born on
February
23, 1927 in Pécs (he died in Strasbourg in September 2001, at the
age of 74).
His
life companion, Friderika Kolompár, nicknamed Frima,
was born on April 8, 1933 in
Sárhida
(Zala county).
They
brought up eight children, two from their earlier marriages and six
of their own.
The
father, Elemér Kolompár, was born from Rudolf’s first marriage on
May 15,
1950,
György from the mother’s on December 8, 1952.
The
family lived in Bükkösd, Baranya county, from keeping livestock and
dealing in
horses.
Their first children were born in that village, in chronological
order: József, or Pubi,
(September
8, 1954), János (August 13, 1956), and the twins Gyula and Ibolya
(March
23,
1959; Ibolya died in Canada while receiving medical treatment; and
was buried in
Hamilton).
Their other twins, Sándor and András (June 14, 1962) were born
after they had
left
Bükkösd.
In
1960 the Kolompárs moved to the village of Csór in Fejér county,
where they lived
on
a gypsy estate attached to the periphery of the village. Rudolf
Kolompár worked in
a
mine, at an aluminium furnace and in a power plant in neighbouring
Várpalota. In
the
1960s he requested the Ministry of the Interior to change his
family’s name to
Krasznai.
His aim was to prevent to his children from suffering discrimination
at school.
After
training to be a mason and a lorry-driver, József Krasznai, the
eldest of the
Krasznai
siblings worked in Budapest for a few years (his daughter from his
first
marriage
is called Henrietta Krasznai, or Baba),
then, on a mortgage from the National
99
Savings
Bank, he built a family house in Csór and took on a job as
lorry-driver with the
Alba
Volán transport company in Székesfehérvár. He and his second
wife, Gizella
Jónás,
had a son, József Krasznai, or Csaba,
and a daughter, Timea Krasznai, or Karol.
From
the Gypsy Estate in Csór to the Village of Zámoly
In
1985, Friderika Kolompár left the gypsy estate of Csór and moved to
the part of
Zámoly,
a village a few kilometres from Csór, which is called Belmajor,
buying herself
an
old peasant house from the money she got for her house in Csór. Her
decision to move
was
motivated by a family conflict: her husband had met his former life
companion, and
Friderika
reacted by breaking off her relationship with him and moving away.
Family peace
was
soon restored, mainly as a result of their children’s requests:
Frima resumed
her
relationship
with her husband and they settled down together in the house in
Zámoly. At
that
time, there were two Roma families (the Lakatos’ and the Gómans),
consisting partly
of
distant relatives of the Krasznai family, living in the houses in
Belmajor which were
originally
built for servants before the war.
In
the late 1980s four of Friderika Kolompár’s adult children moved
to Zámoly, too:
Gyula
and his life companion, Ágnes Horváth, or Mari,
squatted part of a house there.
Ibolya,
Gyula’s twin sister (Mrs László Balogh) moved in with Gyula.
Having no child
of
her own, Ibolya was looking after Gyula’s children, Elemér,
Krisztián and Szilvia.
Like
József before him, János built a house on mortgage from the
National Savings Bank
in
Csór. He still lives and works there as a skilled solderer at the
Inota Aluminium
Furnace
in Várpalota despite the fact that the members of his family have
been
repeatedly
attacked physically in recent times. Sándor and András also moved
to Zámoly,
Sándor
lived in a flat which he was allowed to use as a favour, and András
was a tenant.
Living
in the servants’ houses, László G., or Drizár,
and his wife, Ilona Lakatos’, or
Giza’s
family were their neighbours at that time.
According
to later fact-finding investigations and documents kept by the
village
authority,
there were two families which lived in flats they actually owned.
Property
relations
concerning the other houses are not clear enough. Some of the houses
belonged
to
the local agricultural co-operative but were not used by it, others
were the property of
the
local Savings Fund. All were in a poor condition.
The
Zámoly Roma men worked as ‘hands’ (cleaners, refuse collectors)
with various
firms
run by the Székesfehérvár municipal maintenance authority, in the
oil refinery in
Százhalombatta
and as navvies with various employers.
Around
the Social Transformation of 1989–90
At
the time of the social transformation in 1989-90, many of the Zámoly
Roma lost
their
permanent jobs and from then on had to live from odd jobs. With the
exception of
Ibolya
Krasznai, who now had a serious heart problem, the women did their
traditional
jobs
of running the household and looking after the children. Rudolf
Krasznai had been
put
on disability pension. Much of the income of the families came from a
variety of
100
allowances
such as the child benefit, the regularly arriving education support,
unemployment
benefits and the income substitute. The brothers and sisters shared
their
living
space with those of their kin who were left without a flat or house
of their own,
and
after some time there were several Roma families living in Zámoly,
including the
grandchildren
who now had families of their own.
At
the suggestion of Zámoly teachers, the children of these Roma
families who were
at,
or about to enter, primary school were often sent before expert
committees in
Székesfehérvár
to decide about the necessity of transferring them to the Arany János
Primary
School in Székesfehérvár, which is a special school for ‘slightly
mentally disabled
pupils’.
About every fourth child in the family was declared ‘slightly
mentally disabled’.
(Today,
these children are studying at French schools in Strasbourg under
average
conditions,
sometimes with good results.)
THE
STORY UNWINDS
The
First Conflicts in Zámoly
During
the night of October 30-31, 1997, Zámoly was hit by strong wind and
rain,
which
caused the roof of one of the semi-detached servant’s houses to
slip. On
inspection,
the village local authority also found that some of the bearing walls
had also
been
damaged. After inspecting the entire line of semi-detached houses,
the mayor’s
office
found the buildings dangerous and unfit for human dwelling. At the
mayor’s
orders,
the families of the Krasznai siblings (Gyula, Ibolya, Sándor and
András) and the
Góman
family were put up in the theatre of the local community centre.
Later on the
parents,
Rudolf Krasznai and Friderika Kolompár were also moved into the
community
centre,
who reckoned that the village would see to the restoration of their
damaged home.
The
exact extent of the damage done to the buildings can no longer be
ascertained. At
the
order of the mayor, without giving notice to the relevant
construction authorities, and
without
informing the owners and users, their houses were demolished. No
written expert
opinion
on the condition of the buildings was given. The notary’s decree
for the
demolition,
dated November 13, 1997 and setting a deadline of December 1 for the
execution,
lacks an appeal clause, which is a breach of the law according to the
ombudsman.
The houses were quickly bulldozed during the week following November
2.
The
buildings bulldozed included Rudolf Krasznai and Friderika Kolompár’s
house,
which
was also situated in the Belmajor52
but was separate
from and stood some distance
away
from the former servants’ houses and had not suffered any
significant damage. The
52
There
is only one Roma family living in Belmajor, Zámoly today, József
Lakatos, Szibbaj,
and
his wife,
Piroska
Lakatos, or Muki’s
family.
They had bought their house from a local inhabitant, but were able to
pay
part
of the price only, so the house was sold at auction. There being no
other prospective buyer, the house went
back
to the original owner at half the auction price. Of the 13 children
the couple had brought up (they had lost
one
as an infant) Melinda Lakatos, András Góman’s life companion now
living in Strasbourg with her three
children.
As she came back to visit once in January 2001, only her husband was
given political asylum, so she
has
no work permit in France, either. In late November 2001, this family
also asked for asylum in Strasbourg.
Their
application is being processed.
101
persons
proceeding as agents of the local authority and the first instance
construction
authority
acknowledged, during the inspection conducted by the ombudsman, the
fact
that
no official records had been made either of the inspection of
premises or of its
findings,
and that there was no written expert opinion on, or record of the
conditions which
the
inspectors had supposedly perceived.
The
Roma who had been moved into the community centre could not pay the
gas and
electricity
bills, so the local authority switched off the gas supplies of the
building in April
1998
and electricity from April 30 to May 14, 1998. Water supply was also
suspended
but
it was soon resumed by the National Health Office to remove the
hazard of an
epidemic.
In
the period between October 31 1997 and July 13, 1999, i.e. the time
during which
they
were living crammed together in the theatre room of the community
centre – the
Roma
families were physically assaulted several times. Mrs László
Balogh, i.e. Ibolya
Krasznai,
president of the Zámoly Gypsy Minority Self-Government, tells us
that atrocities
were
especially common on winter nights when there was a disco dancing
event in the
village.
Young people arriving at the disco from neighbouring villages, e.g.
Csákvár,
Gánt,
Lovasberény, occasionally Székesfehérvár, Alcsútdoboz and
Felcsút, would smash
in
the windows of the community centre with stones and harass the Roma
there in other
ways.
Several children, including babies, had to be taken to hospital
because they
contracted
pneumonia and other pulmonary diseases in the theatre which could not
be
heated
and was therefore cold.
The
Zámoly Roma reported many of these cases to the police but the
offenders were
never
caught.
Prejudices
The
anti-Roma atrocities were reinforced by the political declarations,
comments and
other
utterances made by the government and the local authority which
tended to foster
prejudices
against the Hungarian Roma, including those in Zámoly who often
became the
topic
of media news reports around the time.
Gyula
Horn, prime minister of Hungary between 1994 and 1998, called on the
Roma
on
several occasions (e.g. at the congress of the Roma organisation
Lungo Drom and at a
plenary
meeting of the miners’ trade union in Balatonfüred) to ‘distance
themselves from
the
criminals’ and expressed his judgement that work-evaders should not
press for
(housing)
rights. These speeches were made at the time when the ‘ghetto
affair’ of
Székesfehérvár
was in the focus of public attention. (The local authority, which was
dominantly
right-wing, wanted to settle out of the town the Roma families who
had been
previously
resettled into
1
Rádió street.) Prime minister Viktor Orbán, in a speech made in
1998, „offered” work and
education
to the gypsy community, 70-80 percent of which were unemployed and
exposed
to wide-spread discrimination in workplaces and institutions.
The
speech was applauded by the right wing, containing as it did an
unmistakable
message:
the gypsies themselves are responsible for their disadvantages, poor
education
and
their status of outcasts from the world of employment.
102
Resigning
Zámoly mayor János Horváth was interviewed by Tizenhat
Óra, a program
on
Radio Kossuth on November 1998 and by Aktuális,
a political program aired on
Hungarian
Television 1. In these interviews he used expressions and made
factual claims
about
the members of the Zámoly Gypsy Minority Self-Government, i.e. the
gypsies of
Zámoly,
which , in the words of the minority ombudsman, a court „may find
to constitute
a
case of libel before the general public which is injurious to
interests”, and are also
defamatory.53
The
Hysteria Campaign Against the Gypsies
As
a result of a general hysteria campaign against the gypsies, people
in Zámoly started
collecting
signatures to show their support for the removal of the Roma families
from the
community
centre.
At
the initiative of Éva Hegyesi Orsós, president of the government
office which deals
with
minority affairs54,
Dr Jenõ Kaltenbach, parliamentary ombudsman of national and
ethnic
minority rights conducted an inquiry into the Zámoly Roma affair
between April
30
and August 12, 1998. The statements and subsequent measures were
published in a
thirty-page
document (registered under 2960/1998). According to the statement of
the
minority
ombudsman
“…while
formally complying with its obligations arising under the laws on the
renting
of flats and rooms and on their alienation, and taking steps to
provide a
provisional
solution to their housing problem, the local authority of Zámoly did
not
take
the steps which would have been necessary for the creation of final
or at least
long-term
housing facilities, steps which were required of it and which cannot
be
justified
with reference to the lack of budgetary resources.”
As
a result of the unlawful measures taken by the notary several Roma
families lost
their
right to the use of a flat and became so vulnerable that they were
threatened by the
immediate
danger of homelessness.
According
to another statement made by the ombudsman, the position of the Roma
families
in terms of social security was so dramatically eroded by the measure
taken by
the
notary and the local authority that the resulting situation amounts
to an indirect
violation
of their fundamental, constitutional rights to human dignity and to
the free
choice
of a place of living. Explaining that these breaches of law were an
example of
indirect
ethnic discrimination, the ombudsman forwarded his statements and
suggestions
to
competent authorities as well as to the Fejér County
Attorney-General’s Office.
The
mayor claimed several times that „there was no plot for sale” in
Zámoly and that
the
Belmajor area of Zámoly was a ‘business and industrial area’
where the construction
53
According
to a letter written by minority ombudsman Jenõ Kaltenbach to Ibolya
Krasznai, president of
the
Zámoly Gypsy Minority Self-Government on November 28, 1998. The
ombudsman also sent Ibolya
Krasznai
a recorded version of the programme but this is not available to us
so we cannot quote from it.
54
Office
of National and Ethnic Minorities.
103
of
houses for human living is prohibited by the detailed reconstruction
plan for the
village.
József Krasznai claimed that the inhabitants of the village had been
unofficially
forbidden
from selling building plots or houses to gypsies. During the same
period, a local
authority
meeting, which had been unlawfully declared a closed session, made
decisions
on
the sale of building plots owned by the authority – to someone who
was not a gypsy.
The
ombudsman’s inquiry lead also to the conclusion that Belmajor – a
centrally situated
area
of Zámoly – was in reality a living area rather than a ‘business
and industrial zone’.
What
József Krasznai (vice president of the Hungarian Roma Parliament,
president of
the
Independent Gypsy Organisation of Fejér County, at the time
president of the
Székesfehérvár
Gypsy Minority Self-Government), the eldest of the Krasznai brothers
had
claimed
was now confirmed: relying on and stirring up the anti-gypsy
sentiments among the
population,
the local authority of Zámoly tried to get rid of the Roma who had
been left
homeless.
Attempted
Solutions
Officials
at the Ministry of the Interior, the Office of National and Ethnic
Minorities
and
the County Assembly of Fejér County suggested several times that the
local authority
of
Zámoly should apply with to county regional planning council for a
grant which
would
cover the expenses of construction, but the mayor rejected these
suggestions
saying
he was ‘being put under pressure’.
“It
is a condition of receiving a regional planning council grant that
the families
should
be able to cover 20% of the construction expenses”, Aladár
Horváth, president
of
the board of trustees of the Roma Civil Rights Foundation wrote in
his report on the
facts
dated July 22, 1998, which he forwarded to Mrs Magda Kósa Kovács,
president
of
the human rights committee of Parliament, adding that the National
Gypsy Minority
Self-Government
was ready to cover the required 20% from the 100 million HUF
support
provided by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional
Development
for purposes of regional planning and the development of backward
areas.”
This
proposal, too, was turned down by the local authority.
“Governmental
funds must be secured for the purchase of at least two building
plots,
which costs 2 million HUF at most – the document quoted from the
Roma Civil
Rights
Foundation continues –for the construction of 3 semi-detached
houses with 3 flats
each
from funds available from the government resources provided for the
purpose of
reducing
social disadvantage […] As far as the 35% beneficiary’s
contribution required
for
the use of the support is concerned, 20% should be provided by the
National
Gypsy
Minority Self-Government, and a construction company should be found
which
is ready to acknowledge unpaid work to be done by the family members
as an
equivalent
to the remaining 15%.”
104
On
October 30, 1998, negotiations were conducted at the mayor’s office
with the
participation
of MP Edit Herczog (Hungarian Socialist Party), József Takács, the
new
mayor
elected in the autumn of that year, Ibolya Krasznai, president of the
Zámoly
Gypsy
Minority Self-Government, Ildikó Dobóvári, head of the office of
the National
Gypsy
Minority Self-Government, Aladár Horváth, president of the board of
trustees of
the
Roma Civil Rights Foundation, József Krasznai, vice-president of the
Hungarian
Roma
Parliament and others. Agreement was reached on the following points:
• the
county assembly would help the village authority to pay the public
works bills;
• the
local authority would exchange the building plot in Fenyves street
bought with
the
participation of József Krasznai – the plot on which construction
did not start as a
result
of pressure from the inhabitants and with reference to the village
planning schemes
– for
a plot on which construction could actually be started;
• the
National Gypsy Minority Self-Government would ensure the construction
of
houses;
• József
Krasznai would help the Roma to find employment;
• Edit
Herczog would have the windows of the community centre glazed on her
own
expenses
(amounting to fifty or sixty thousand HUF).
The
Anomalies in the Re-housing and in the Construction
József
Krasznai, later spokesman for the Hungarian gypsies asking for asylum
in
Strasbourg,
said in an interview:
“The
mayor suggested to the minority office of the Horn government55
that the
government
should provide 25 million HUF for the purpose of placing the Roma in
various
parts of the country outside Zámoly. This suggestion was made at a
time when
it
was common knowledge that the Roma might be allotted some money for
the
purpose
of building social welfare flats in Zámoly.
It
would also have been an acceptable solution to place the Roma
somewhere near
Zámoly,
in the vicinity of Székesfehérvár.
It
would have carried a bad political message, too, if a village had
been ‘purged’ of
gypsies
on a government subsidy. Finally we agreed to build flats from the
‘social
policy’
support which is due every citizen of Hungary, i.e. not from funds
specially
allotted
to Roma, and that the flats would be the private property of those
for whom
they
would be built. Since there were small families among the gypsies,
the National
Gypsy
Minority Self-Government supplemented the social policy support from
its
own
budget.
I
managed to find a person resident in Székesfehérvár who was ready
to sell plots
in
Zámoly to gypsies. This released a signature collecting campaign
against us. Later
it
turned out that the construction ‘does not fit into’ the detailed
reconstruction scheme
for
the village, so the Roma soon found themselves in a swampy area at
the edge of
the
village. Even so, problems with the reconstruction scheme soon
emerged, so the
55
The
president of the Office of National and Ethnic Minorities was Éva
Orsós at the time.
105
National
Savings Bank did not transfer the money in time. The anti-gypsy press
‘reported’
that the Roma do not want to work, while, in fact, gypsy volunteers
for the
construction,
unknown to all of us, turned up from places as far away as Kalocsa.
The
work
was stopped several times by the village and the National Savings
Bank.”
(Magyar
Hírlap, April 24,
2001.)
Reports
of similar import, stirring hatred for the gypsies, appeared in
certain
newsreels
of public radio and television, in the pro-government daily and in
the two
extreme
nationalist weeklies.
After
the new mayor József Takács reported the Roma to the police on
account of the
unpaid
bills incurred at the community centre and had them removed from the
theatre,
Flórián
Farkas, president of the National Gypsy Minority Self-Government had
them
brought
to Budapest one night. The Zámoly Roma were put up in the community
centre
of
the National Gypsy Self-Government under very special conditions:
they were
prohibited
from leaving the building and security guards were posted near the
entrance.
Although
there were habitable rooms, a theatre, offices and bathrooms and
toilets in the
upstairs
part of the building, the families with their children were
‘accommodated’ on the
ground
floor amidst heaps of construction material. They were prohibited
from
communicating
with the press and put under threat: they were told that they would
get
any
help only if they do not tell the truth about the conditions under
which they were put
up
or about their lack of personal freedom. As a result of these
threats, while Ibolya
Krasznai
did tell some associates of the Roma Civil Rights Foundation about
their
situation,
she spoke favourably about them and denied having been shut in at the
subsequent
press conference, which was conducted in the presence of Flórián
Farkas.
The
Misconceived Role of the National Gypsy Self-Government56
As
the Zámoly local authority expelled the Roma from the local
community centre
because
of the unpaid public utility bills on July 31, 1999, the National
Gypsy Self-Government
undertook,
not without pressure from the government, to solve the housing
problem
of the Zámoly Roma by using the governmental housing construction
support
due
to families with children, and by advancing the sum that was supposed
to be paid by
the
beneficiaries themselves, i.e. money from its own budget. In deciding
to do so, it
avoided
the option recommended by the minority ombudsman, namely of involving
other
civil
organisations representing and protecting the interests of the
citizens concerned, by
demanding
of the Zámoly authorities that they should solve the housing problem
of the
Roma.
In doing so, it created a very bad precedent: the example of a
separate ‘Roma
social
policy’, and transcended the sphere of action and authority of
minority selfgovernment,
which
protect interests with the purpose of securing cultural autonomy.
Collecting
Signatures in Zámoly to Express Objections
to
the Construction of Housing for the Roma
56
Called
‘National Gypsy Minority Self-Government’ before January 27,
1999.
106
After
the purchase of the plot mentioned in the interview with József
Krasznai, local
authority
representatives launched and supported a campaign of signatures in
protest against
the
construction of houses for the Roma. According to the Zámoly Roma,
it was as a result
of
the campaign rather than of the disharmony with the detailed
reconstruction scheme of
the
village that the construction of their flats, implemented by the
Public Service
Corporation
of the National Gypsy Self-Government specialising in the
construction of
social
welfare flats, could start at the site where it started, namely
Vasvári Pál street, at the
edge
of the village. János Babai, a representative of the National Gypsy
Self-Government
took
part in the organisation of operations. Writer-journalist Béla
Osztojkán, vice-president
of
the same authority undertook to ‘handle the affair politically’
and to manage relations
with
the press.
At
the same time as the Zámoly Roma were practically locked up in the
property of
the
National Gypsy Self-Government, which was undergoing redecoration and
partial
reconstruction,
attempts to find rented flats for them failed and the National Gypsy
Self-
Government
started constructing a gypsy estate of wooden cabins made partly from
new
materials,
partly from materials taken from a housebreaker’s yard, and of
containers, in
Vasvári
Pál street in Zámoly. Among the houses there were grocery store
stands with
glassed
display shelves, other rooms for purposes other than human living and
two new
wooden
cabins bought from a Ukrainian businessman at a 50% reduced price.
All in all, six
structures
were put up in Vasvári street, all consisting of one single living
room and all
unfit
for the instalment of heating, cooking and bathroom facilities. (The
Roma used one
of
the containers for cooking and the other for storing their furniture.
The estate was
completed
by a wheeled toilet and shower.
The
construction of brick houses could finally start in the autumn of
1999 as a
result
of a fairly complicated construction and financing arrangement.57
As indicated
earlier,
to receive the governmental housing construction support (the social
policy support)
the
beneficiaries have to have a certain percentage o the costs available
from their own
resources.
This contribution from the beneficiaries’ own resources was paid in
advance by
the
building contractor – the public service corporation of the
National Gypsy Self-
Government
– in exchange for earthwork and other unskilled work to be done by
the
Roma.
The National Savings Bank was prepared to transfer the governmental
support
sum
after the public service corporation presented the percentage in
question.
Construction
was often interrupted because of formal objections made by the local
authority
and there were frequent delays in the transfer of the social policy
support to the
public
service corporation by the National Savings Bank. At the same time,
all the Roma
concerned
took part in the work in Vasvári Pál street, supported by relatives
as well as
gypsy
and Hungarian friends.
The
Hungarian Right-Wing Press
57
Similar
‘financing arrangements’ were interpreted as fraudulent crediting
in other parts of the
country,
e.g. in attorney’s offices in Borsod-Abaúj county, and the
contractors were punished and the customers
were
admonished by the attorney’s office.
107
Reports
and programmes which encouraged existing prejudices by describing the
Zámoly
Roma as lazy, work-evading and criminal were published and broadcast
in the
right-wing
press several times, including, primarily, the pro-government daily
Magyar
Nemzet,
on Hungarian Television and on Hungarian Radio, supposedly a public
service
establishment.
Officials of the Zámoly local authority as well as politicians at
the national
level
voiced their opinions which often involved the use of derogatory
language referring
to
the Roma families in Vasvári street.
As
a result, anti-gypsy sentiment grew all-over the country but it was
directed with
special
force against the Zámoly Roma who were described as receiving flats
from the
state
as a privilege conferred on them on the basis of ethnic origin, as
‘presents’ which
they
had in no way deserved. Of the several television reports aired in
this period those
made
by prospective Party of Hungarian Truth and Life MP Tibor Franka were
and will
remain
especially ‘memorable’. A journalist aspiring for a political
career, Tibor Franka
repeatedly
suggests the unmistakable conclusion: the Zámoly Roma do not deserve
to
have
the flats, they are receiving them as presents from the state, as it
were, and they are
not
even ready to contribute to their construction.
The
increasing tension in the village between the Roma and the rest of
the population
was
in no small part due to this kind of media activity. Ibolya Krasznai,
president of the
Local
Gypsy Self-Government and others told us that they had been exposed
to various
kinds
of threatening conduct, loud provocative remarks on the
Székesfehérvár coach, in
food
shops and restaurants etc. and there had been minor skirmishes, as
well.
According
to Károly Flaschner, an inhabitant of Zámoly, there were several
illegal
workers
at the construction, and many of these persons have not received
their wages to
the
present day. The National Gypsy Self-Government is indebted to the
Varga family,
whose
property lies next to the Roma estate. The plot, partly on swampy
land, in Vasvári
street
had turned out to be too small for the houses of the gypsy families,
so the leaders
of
the public service corporation struck an unwritten agreement with the
Varga family,
whose
house was on the verge of collapsing: The Vargas allowed the
corporation to erect
some
of the buildings to reach over to their plot, in exchange for the
renovation of their
house.
This was never done, and since the condition of the Vargas’ house
became worse,
Piroska
Varga and her life companion, Viktor Mayer ‘squatted’ one of the
empty flats on
the
estate in the summer of 2001.58
The
Crime which Ended with Homicide; Funeral and Criminal Proceedings
According
to the copy of indictment submitted by the District Attorney of Fejér
County,
three
young men resident in Csákvár, a village near Zámoly, drove in a
Trabant car
which
one of them had just bought, to the Zámoly gypsy estate late on the
evening of
August
28, 1999, with the intention of taking revenge on Krisztián Krasznai
for some
58
The
flat in question belongs to Etel Lakatos, also known as Baba,
and
her children, who did not go to
Strasbourg
with the Krasznai family. At the moment they are living in an adobe
house without electricity in
a
village called Kisláng.
108
previous
offence done to a friend of theirs, who is also an inhabitant of
Csákvár.
(Krisztián
Krasznai born on September 19, 1980, is the younger son of Gyula
Krasznai,
who
was given political asylum in Strasbourg. With his parents divorced
and her mother
living
on the Sóstó housing estate in Székesfehérvár, he was fostered
by Ibolya Krasznai,
Gyula’s
twin sister, who has no child of her own.) Sándor N., who drove the
car, Ferenc
Cs.,
the later victim, and his companion Zoltán P. stopped in front of
the estate in Vasvári
street.
Cs. And P. got out of the car and started looking for Krisztián
Krasznai. The exact
details
of the story after this are still somewhat unclear. What is certain
is that a fight
broke
out between the Zámoly Roma and the visitors from Csákvár and one
of them,
Ferenc
Cs., who was already fleeing, was so severely injured on the head
that he died in
hospital
the following day.
His
funeral was turned into a racist, anti-gypsy political event by the
activists of the
youth
organisation of the Party of Hungarian Truth and Life who had arrived
from all
over
the country. Magyar
Fórum devoted a
detailed report to the funeral, which was
accompanied
by repeated utterances of racist, nationalist and anti-gypsy slogans.
Zoltán
P. and Sándor M., who were fleeing in the direction of Csákvár,
did not call
either
the ambulance or the police to help their companion who had been left
behind. The
ambulance
was called by Szilvia Krasznai, Krisztián’s sister, on her
companion, Ferenc
Lakatos’
(also called Pubi)
mobile phone. The police were called, with considerable delay,
by
Zoltán P. and Sándor N., who had been urged by friends in Csákvár
to do so.
In
the course of the court proceedings, which are still going on, Zoltán
P. was heard as
a
witness. He told the court that they had ended up at the gypsy estate
by accident and
had
really been looking for Richárd V. (His testimony seems to be
contradicted by some
‘off
record’ information given to an associate of Fejér
Megyei Hírlap, a
reporter of the
Roma
Press Centre and the fact-finding associate of the Roma Civil Rights
Foundation by a
waitress
in a Csákvár espresso bar, who did not wish to have her identity
revealed.
According
to her story, the statements in the indictment are true: Ferenc Cs.
and Zoltán
P.
both of them practitioners of kempo, an Eastern martial art which
uses a stick as a
weapon,
were heading to the Zámoly gypsy estate late in the evening to
‘settle accounts’
for
some old conflict at a discotheque. According to the waitress’
story, this was the plan
for
the carrying out of which Ferenc Cs., who had consumed some alcohol,
found a
driver
in the person of Sándor N. and an assistant in the person of Zoltán
P.).
So
far, there has been one single piece of evidence in support of
Krisztián Krasznai’s
culpability,
namely Richárd V.’s testimony. Richárd V. told the court that
Krisztián
Krasznai
himself had told him, in the presence of Antal K., that the blows
which later
caused
Ferenc Cs.’ death in the Székesfehérvár hospital, had come from
his own hand.
Antal
K. denied this in court, saying that Krisztián Krasznai had never
said anything of
the
sort.
Krisztián
Krasznai was first detained during a police interrogation in the
autumn of
1999,
but he was not then remanded in custody as a result of the
intervention of his legal
representative.
He was caught again in February, 2000, by which time he had been
wanted
by the police, and he was ordered to be remanded in preliminary
custody.59
59
After
it had proved impossible to install any kind of heating into the
wooden cabins, the Zámoly Romas
were
again moved to Budapest by the National Gypsy Self-Government in late
1999. The subpoenas addressed
109
Magdolna
D., a resident of Budapest, was staying as a guest at the gypsy
estate at the
time
of the crime. She gave first aid to Ferenc Cs., who obviously had a
very bad injury,
before
the ambulance arrived. During the police examination stage Magdolna
D. confessed
that
she had caused the severe head injuries to Ferenc Cs. She was
detained a few days
after
the incident on suspicion of bodily harm with fatal consequences, and
the court
ordered
her to be remanded in custody. Of weak and fragile physique, Magdolna
D. was
unanimously
described by eye-witnesses as incapable of causing such severe
injury.
When
asked by an associate of the Roma Civil Rights Foundation why she had
undertaken
to
declare herself guilty of the crime, Ibolya Krasznai replied: out of
love. The identity of
the
person she was in love with could not be ascertained. The person in
question „was no
longer
around the estate”, Ibolya Krasznai said. After Krisztián Krasznai
became suspect,
Magdolna
D. was soon released.
The
court had no opportunity to question her: she died of a heroin
overdose in a toilet
of
the MÁV Hospital in Budapest in the summer of 2000.
At
the request of dr Attila Monostory, the attorney representing the
aggrieved party in
the
proceedings, Fejér County Court heard an anonymous witness. The
press, other
witnesses
and even Krisztián Krasznai, the accused, were excluded from the
hearing,
which
was attended only by his counsels, the prosecutor, and the members of
the court.
Described
as ‘specially protected’ the witness is reported by the press and
other
apparently
reliable sources to have delivered second- or third-hand testimony,
like
Richárd
V. had done before him. He told the court that he had been told by
Ibolya
Krasznai
that Krisztián Krasznai had, indeed, been the murderer, and that the
conflict had
arisen
as a result of some unsettled drug deal. This kind of motivation
cannot be ruled out
completely
in view of the fact that Magdolna D., the later heroin overdose
victim, was on
the
estate at the time.
The
second part of the protected witness’ testimony, however, is
implausible: he claims
that
Magdolna D. was persuaded, in the presence of Aladár Horváth,
president of the board
of
trustees of the Roma Civil Rights Foundation, József Krasznai, the
uncle of the accused,
and
a journalist (head of the fact-finding group of the Roma Civil Rights
Foundation) to
confess
having committed the crime. This is flatly denied by the persons
mentioned in
the
testimony.
Aladár
Horváth was not in Zámoly at the time. The Foundation was
represented by his
fact-finding
colleague, who also denies having taken part in such a conversation.
József
Krasznai
was staying in Greece at the time. The court referred the case back
to the
attorney’s
office for supplementary investigation with a deadline of two months.
According
to Népszabadság,
no supplementary indictment has been made, which means
that
the information given by the witness has been proved unfounded.
Occasional
references were made to a second offender acting „with an intention
shared
by the principal defendant” in the indictment, the court
proceedings and the rightwing
newspapers.
The proceedings made it seem most likely that this supposed second
offender
was identical with László G. László G. has recently had an
accident and is
presently
lying in coma in a hospital in Strasbourg. Doctors say he is unlikely
to be able to
to
Krisztián Krasznai at his address in Zámoly failed to reach him and
the court interpreted his absence as ‘hiding’.
This
was the ground for ordering him to be remanded in custody.
110
bear
testimony, speak or look after himself even if he should ever become
conscious
again.60
Included
among the exhibits is a baseball bat, which was handed over to the
policemen
by the Roma. They said it had been brought by the young people from
Csákvár
and had been used by them as a weapon in their attack on the gypsies
who were
woken
up from their sleep by the sudden onslaught, in a state of extreme
tension caused by
the
atmosphere of constant threat they had been living in.
In
September 1999 the gypsy estate of Zámoly became a scene of arson. A
fire was lit
between
two wooden cabins in the area where the gypsies had ‘stored’ the
furniture and
clothes
of László G.’s family. The cabin used by Rudolf Krasznai and
Friderika
Kolompár
was saved from complete destruction by sheer chance. The arsonists
have not
yet
been identified.
In
the autumn of 1999 the Zámoly gypsies became the target of several
menacing
messages.
The anonymous letters arriving from all over the country – e.g.
from Szeged
or
Miskolc – were handed over to Székesfehérvár police headquarters
by Ibolya
Krasznai,
president of the local gypsy self-government.
Budapest,
Csór – the Last Months of the Roma in Hungary
In
October, 1999 the National Gypsy Self-Government moved the Zámoly
Roma to a
villa
at 2 Törpe street in the 12th
district of
Budapest. (As we have indicated, the brick
houses
had not been built before the end of 1999, and the wooden cabins,
which had
been
built partly from used materials, were unfit for the instalment of
heating.) Zámoly
authorities
soon called on the Roma to register their departure from their
original homes,
and
attempts were also made to declare their permanent addresses
‘fictitious’. These
attempts
failed as a result of the intervention of legal defence
organisations.
The
owner of the villa in Buda – ‘W.’ – and his business had been
in contact with the
National
Gypsy Self-Government, which was then lead by Flórián Farkas. Part
of the
property
W. had bought was used by an elderly lady, a lonely pensioner, and
attempts to
have
her moved out of the building had failed because she had a perfectly
lawful right to
live
there. In late 1999, a special bargain was truck between W. and the
National Gypsy
Self-Government.
The proprietor, W. allowed the self-government to use the house, free
of
charge, as temporary accommodation for homeless gypsy families,
asking only for utility
fees
by the self-government. In exchange, the self-government was to
create a ‘nuisance’
to
the elderly lady in the form of the presence of Roma neighbours,
which would, sooner
or
later, make W.’s unwanted tenant leave on terms dictated by him. In
fact, there had
been
some tension between the elderly lady and families from Borsod-Abaúj
county who
lived
in Törpe street earlier. However, with the Zámoly Roma the
stratagem failed
because
the elderly lady soon made friends with them.
With
the exception of the elderly Krasznai couple, the families were put
up in one large
hall
on the ground floor, sleeping on cast iron bunk beds with wire
mattresses. They
60
László
G. died on December 6, 2001, in Strasbourg.
111
could
not bring any furniture or personal belongings and kept most of their
clothes under
the
beds.
Once
during their stay in the villa, the gypsy women were attacked by two
young men
shouting
anti-gypsy slogans (the children were at school and the men were at
work in the
oil
refinery of Százhalombatta.) Their neighbour called the police and
protected Friderika
Kolompár
with her own body.
While
the Zámoly Roma were staying in Budapest, agents of the National
Security
Bureau
found out that a couple of young men in Csákvár had collected
leftover
explosives
from World War II in the forest around Csákvár. Criminal
proceedings were
started
against a young man studying at a secondary school in Székesfehérvár
and the
explosives
were seized in time.
With
the construction of the brick houses in Zámoly approaching
completion, the
National
Gypsy Self-Government held a consecration ceremony at the Zámoly
gypsy
estate,
which was recorded by television cameras. The keys were handed over
to the
gypsy
families and the Catholic priest of Csákvár consecrated the
buildings. (Zámoly is a
Protestant
village, but the Roma are Catholics.) Flórián Farkas announced the
fact that he
had
made an agreement with the Minister of the Interior of the Orbán
government that a
police
station would be established in Zámoly to protect the Roma from
further
persecution,
which had been their expressed wish.
Most
of the various utensils left in the cabins and containers had
disappeared in the
meantime.
The Roma estate had obviously been ransacked. According to
information
revealed
by József Krasznai the Roma had by then decided not to move to
Zámoly. They
were
worried about their own and their children’s life and bodily
integrity. In any case,
they
took the financial aid from Flórián Farkas, which was a gift
additional to the keys to
their
flats.
In
a televised statement a few days later the president of the National
Gypsy Self-
Government
denied the news of a police station being about to be established in
Zámoly
and
said it was a matter of everyone’s own responsibility whether they
would or would
not
move into the newly built brick houses in Zámoly.
The
accommodation of the Zámoly Roma in Törpe street, in Budapest was
terminated
because
of the completion of their new houses, but they had every reason not
to move
into
them. In desperation, they moved, as a last resort, to József
Krasznai’s house in
Csór.
This house was built on mortgage from the National Savings Bank in
the 1980s and
József
Krasznai found himself unable to pay the raised interest after his
job in
Székesfehérvár
was wound up (and a transport company became bankrupt). Since the
house
itself was going to be sold at auction, the Roma moved into the
agricultural
outbuildings.
Their situation became hopeless: discouraged from moving into their
flats
in
Zámoly because of the constant threats, they could not find another
habitable property
anywhere
else.
THE
FINAL OUTCOME: STRASBOURG
After
a spree at Easter, an inhabitant of Csór lost his money and personal
documents,
which
he reported to his friends by saying he had been robbed. Some of
these people,
112
who
had recently had their country cottage burgled, suggested that he
might have been
robbed
by the ‘murderous gypsies of Zámoly’ who had moved back to Csór
a few weeks
before,
and who were ‘known by everyone’ to lead a life of crime. They
reported the
Zámoly
gypsies to the police, which was reported by the media. No
examination started,
however,
because the lost valuables had been recovered in the meantime – a
fact which
was
not reported by the media.
Spearheaded
by Dezsõ Csete, mayor of Csór, who had become notorious for his
antigypsy
statements
in the late 1980s, which he had never retracted (such as „all
gypsies
should
be shot – with one bullet”), the local representative body
prevented the Roma
families
from officially registering their residence in Csór. The local
kindergarten and
school
refused to register their children. In a televised news programme the
first man of
the
village stated „parasites like the Zámoly Roma are expelled even
by animal
communities”.
Harassment
at night in front of the Krasznais’ house in Arany János street
was a regular
nocturnal
occurrence. The walls of the house were decorated with swastikas and
racist
slogans.
In May 2000, József Krasznai organised a press conference at his
flat where he
announced
their decision to leave Hungary and ask for political asylum in a
Western
country.
Katalin
Katz, a teacher at the social work department of Jerusalem University
(one of
the
famous activists of movements for the rights of the Palestinians) had
met Rudolf
Krasznai
and Friderika Kolompár during interviews she was making for a
documentary
on
the Roma Holocaust. (The elderly couple are survivors from the
Holocaust: Rudolf
Krasznai
was a forced labourer, while Friderika Kolompár, as a girl, was an
inmate of the
transfer
camp in the castle prison of Komárom during the Holocaust. Several
of their
relatives,
including Friderika’s father, were deported to Auschwitz, and died
or
disappeared
there.) Katalin Katz met József Krasznai in the spring of 2000 and
offered
him
4200 USD to support their escape.
József
Krasznai had the applications translated into English by a
translation office in
Székesfehérvár.
They hired a bus and went to France in July 2000, accompanied by a
shooting
crew of TV2 and Lajos Puporka, a journalist of Népszava
who speaks excellent
French.
The
Krasznais had not told Katalin Katz, who was with them on the bus,
about their
true
destination. She thought they were going to Canada through France.
They only told
her
after they had crossed the border.
In
an interview given to Magyar
Hírlap (April 2001)
Krasznai recalls the events in the
following
words:
“…Flórián
Farkas said that no one was taking any responsibility for what might
happen
if the Roma moved to Zámoly.
After
that there was nothing to negotiate about: I announced at a press
conference
on
May 16, 2,000 that we are going to ask for political asylum abroad.
– Who
advised you to take this option?
– Nobody.
My son and I worked out the details of the journey and then we
discussed
it with Ibolya. It was her task to get the others to accept it. It
wasn’t an easy
113
job
because it is by no means exhilarating to face the prospect of an
unsuccessful
journey
after three years of being tossed about.
– Béla
Osztojkán, vice president of the National Gypsy Self-Government
thinks you
can’t
have been able to organise such a journey all on your own.
– We
had to rent a bus and have our prospective Strasbourg complaint
translated
by
a translation office in Székesfehérvár. An average citizen without
special
knowledge
of political matters is able to do that. We had been organising tours
to
Auschwitz
on the anniversaries of the Roma Holocaust and I had taken a study
trip to
the
United States on an American government grant, and I had also taken
part in the
shooting
of a TV report on gypsy emigrants in Canada.
– How
much money did you have for the travel expenses?
– As
a matter of fact, we didn’t have any. The families had collected
all their
income,
including the child benefits and the pensions, and I had put it into
a post
savings
book at the post office in Csór. While we were making arrangements
for our
departure,
I met Katalin Katz, a woman from Jerusalem who had been in contact
with
my
parents as holocaust survivors. We received 4,000 dollars from her
savings. But
we
didn’t tell her we were going to Strasbourg. She thought we were
going to Canada
through
France.
– But
you were also accompanied by a shooting crew of TV2 and Lajos
Puporka, a
journalist
from Népszava.
– Lajos
Puporka had taken his secondary school degrees at a French school in
Switzerland
so he was coming along to help us as an interpreter. The TV crew had
sworn
secrecy until the following day.”
On
arriving in Strasbourg they drove to the European Court of Human
rights where
they
personally handed in their application which described the
persecution they had
personally
suffered and the wide-ranging discrimination to which Roma in Hungary
are
exposed.
Referring
to the 1951 Geneva Convention, the Roma (almost 50 in number) also
applied
for political asylum in the French Republic. Most of the applicants
were granted
political
asylum in March, 2001 or later. Two families were admitted on the
ground of
family
reunification. One family is awaiting second instance decision after
an
appeal.61
A few members of
the Krasznai family went on to Canada in late 2000, thereby
excluding
themselves from the circle of beneficiaries under French refugee law.
In
2001 the European Court of Human Rights rejected their application in
view of the
fact
that the Roma had not taken all the remedial steps available to them
under Hungarian
law
before submitting an application at the Strasbourg Court.
61
After
successfully proving that they were in Zámoly at the time of the
atrocities, Attila Lakatos and his
companion,
Henrietta Krasznai and their four children were granted asylum at
second instance after an appeal,
in
January 2002. Melinda Lakatos, who had returned to Hungary for a
short period a year earlier, was also granted
asylum.
In
November, 2001, József Lakatos, or Szibbaj, and his companion
Piroska Lakatos, Muki, and their seven
children
also arrived in Strasbourg and were given political asylum. On March
6, 2002, however, before
OFPRA
delivered its decision, they returned to Hungary, bringing Melinda
Lakatos and János Lakatos, already
political
refugees, with them.
114
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