This blog has previously reminded visitors of the Nazi's other Holocaust, the attempted genocide of the Roma (gypsies) and has drawn attention to the continued state descrimination against them. Der Spiegel Online once more reports on the racism against the Roma and describes similarities about how the Hungarian government now treats the "Roma Problem" with the Nazi past.
Hungarians will soon be performing "community" work under a new law, which dictates that anyone who is out of work for more than 90 days in a row forfeits the right to social welfare and membership in the social insurance system. The government is still searching for projects to put the army of the unemployed back to work, at a monthly wage of roughly €290 ($418). There is talk of building dikes, planting trees and collecting herbs. 40 gypsies from Gyöngyöspata have been assigned the job of clearing hibiscus bushes and undergrowth for four months. The plan to make community service compulsory targets the Roma minority according to the Guardian
Are "forced labor camps" being created here, in the middle of the European Union, as the Hungarian daily newspaper Népszava wrote? Are unemployed people from remote villages being housed in worker camps on large construction sites? When yhe prime minister Orbán praises the "workfare" model of social benefits in return for labor, he is "quoting the language of the 1930s verbatim." according to one of his ex-university professors.
The Jerusalem Post reports on a co-operative campaign by Roma and Jewish youth in Hungary to combat descrimination.
At a commemoration of the Roma Holocaust in Budapest Ágnes Daróczi, on behalf of Roma rights group Phralipe, drew a parallel between the anti-Roma attacks in 2008-2009 and the Auschwitz murders 67 years ago. Nine attacks were committed on Roma families living on the outskirts of small, rural villages between July 2008 and August 2009 in central and eastern Hungary, claiming the lives of six people, including a child of five.
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