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government of Prime Minister Victor Orban. Conspiracy of silence Devecser Mayor Tamas Toldi, a member of the ruling rightist Fidesz party, says he was deeply shocked by the speeches, yet was powerless to stop an event missold to him as a peace march and complains that he had no help from the central government, which often appears to tolerate such views. Orban eventually bowed to public pressure and condemned the anti-Semitic chanting of "dirty Jews" and "Buchenwald" at a Hungary-Israel football match on August 15, while his government is also trying rehabilitate some historical figures with fascist pasts.
Hungary's village of despair Phil Cain in Devecser, Hungary
T
he Hungarian village of Devecser was in the news again in August when it was invaded by a horde of neo-Nazi thugs baying for the blood of the local Roma, less than two years after being hit by a million cubic metres of caustic red sludge from a local aluminium plant. In its suffering, Devecser is symptomatic of the problems of economic stagnation and rising racism that Hungary is facing. On August 5, around a thousand rightwing extremists were bussed in to the village of 5,000 and whipped up into a murderous frenzy. "You are going to die here, Gypsies! You are going to die here!" they shouted, throwing water bottles and rocks at houses they thought were home to Roma families. Elderly Roma women whose homes they passed say they were "terrified." The marchers had first rallied outside the village church, many wearing combat boots and black shirts and flying the Arpad flag, the symbol of a Greater
Hungary. Non-Roma Hungarians had three options, they were told by Laszlo Toroczkai of the far-right Sixty-four Counties, "to emigrate, to become slaves of the Gypsies, or to fight." "All the trash must be swept out of the country," said Attila Laszlo of the paramilitary group For A Better Future Civil Guard. Later, Zsolt Tyirityan of the Outlaw Army, another paramilitary group, said: "The Gypsy is
said he wanted to see peace, order and safety in Devecser. This, he said, would come when "normal" Hungarians defended themselves against Gypsies. In case of trouble, he urged them to call on paramilitaries to resolve it. "This is the second disaster here and it is the worse of the two," sighs Alfred Kiraly, a Roma member of Better Chances After The Flood, a group set up to deal with the consequences of the caustic deluge of
"You are going to die here, Gypsies! You are going to die here!" genetically-coded for criminality" and that "genetically-encoded waste" must "disappear from public life."
October 2010. You could do something about the flood of mud, he says, but not about the neo-Nazis.
Gabor Ferenczi, an MP for Jobbik, a far-right party which won 16% of the vote at the last general election in 2010,
Indeed, a culture of silence exists in Hungary about the country's racial tensions, aided and abetted by the
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Kristof Szombati of the LMP, a small liberal Green party, says Fidesz's tactics are designed to avoid confronting their right-wing voters whom they worry will defect to Jobbik at the next general election in 2014; many of them are already unhappy at the government's incompetent handling of the economy, which is back in recession. "They do not comment on far-right actions in the national media, but ask the local Fidesz strongman to address the media," he says. By doing so, Fidesz hopes to prevent local crises becoming a national issue, as happened last year when the farright staged an anti-Roma invasion in Gyongyospata. "It also allows them to evade confronting right-wing voters sympathetic to Jobbik whom they hope to keep in their camp," Szombati says. Szombati explains that Devecser was chosen for the march not because of particular tensions between the two communities, but because a new electoral law favours the largest first two parties in each district, meaning Jobbik seats outside its eastern heartland will be vulnerable at the next elections set for 2014. Most of the village's thousand-or-so Roma have lived alongside their Magyar neighbours for generations. They may sometimes have a more bronzed complexion, but they speak the same
IMF chicken
Tim Gosling in Prague Showing his usual level of statesmanship, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban used his Facebook account in September to reject the conditions demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout as a "list of horrors", so restarting the tedious game of chicken between the pair that has being going on for almost a year. The Fidesz government asked back in November for a ¤15bn bailout loan as its economy struggled and its credit rating was cut to junk despite the government's much-heralded "unorthodox" economic measures. However, the loan has been delayed multiple times because of Orban's resistance to adhere to the legal and economic conditions set by the EU and the IMF, which said on September 13 that it has no date set for a return visit to Hungary following the previous talks held in July. Following the publication of a long list of IMF conditions for a loan programme, Orban claimed said in a video published on his Facebook page that Hungary would reject calls for a cut to pensions and a higher retirement age, reduced bureaucracy, a real estate tax, privatisation, lifting the extraordinary bank tax, scrapping the financial transactions tax, and raising the rate of personal income tax. "The list [of conditions] is long, it can be read in the press," Orban said. "The parliamentary group meeting [of the ruling Fidesz party] took the view, and I personally agree with it, that at this price, this will not work." Given the platform used, Orban's response is clearly one of his regular performances designed for a domestic audience, and is unlikely to derail the negotiations with the IMF and EU. The last thing Washington or Brussels needs is another EU member sliding into crisis, while for all its bluster Budapest will need a bailout sooner rather than later, as poor risk appetite is blocking access to international debt markets. Indeed, it was only on September 5 that Orban came out with the comment he still expects to secure a bailout loan this autumn, while chief aid negotiator Mihaly Varga said a week later the government could complete a deal by the end of this year. Ultimately, Neil Shearing at Capital Economics points out, the recent to-and-fro "underlines a point that we've been making since Hungary first announced that it would seek IMF assistance almost a year ago – namely that it is difficult to see both sides finding a mutually agreeable middle ground on the conditions attached to any loan. We suspect that market turbulence may ultimately force Mr Orban to cede ground."