CONCEPTUALISATION OF CIVIL SOCIETY REGARDING ROMA CIVIC ACTIVISM AND PARTICIPATION
cases, local non-Roma society rather tacitly supported the anti-Roma groups, rather than visibly showing solidarity towards the Roma.5 In Hungary, during the night of August 19, 2012, several neo-Nazi groups (formalised in civic associations) and extreme right media actors dispersed an anti-gypsy rumour that members of a Roma community attacked rightist groups and the police. This false information was enough to mobilise several hundred people, who went on to threaten the affected Roma community and show their solidarity with the Hungarian Guard (an extremist paramilitary organisation) and the police. Roma organisations (none of them being local NGOs) issued a statement, and organised a protest against the extreme-right groups and racial violence. The starting point of the new conceptualisation of civil society should be the post 1989 socioeconomic and political change, which fundamentally changed and redefined people’s lives, values and behaviours. The concept of civil society based on liberal pluralistic values has been challenged by the extreme-right groups whose values are supported by large numbers of people: this should be taken into account in the new conceptualisation of the civil society.
3/ In Hungary the explicit anti-Roma rethoric become tranfered into the political discourse in 2010 when the Jobbik party ( popupilst, xenophobic, extreme right ) gathered 16% of the vote during the parlamentarian election. However amongst Roma activist and scholars there is a consensus that the extreme anti-Roma discourse become legitimized by the incident in October 2006 at Olaszliszka. A middle aged non-Roma teacher was driving through Olaszliszka with his two daughters. He accidentaly hit a girl crossing the roard. The local Roma group bruttaly attacked and killed the driver. This was the incident when the radical far right coined again the term of “Gypsy-crime”. This coinceded with the proliferation of the extreme-right paramilitary groups ( such as Magyar Gárda, Szebb Jövőért, etc) which used a harsh anti-Roma discourse which become favored by varois media outlets. As a result of this process from 2008 there were series of murders against Roma. According to the European Roma Rights Centre, forty eight attacks against Roma and/or their property in Hungary—many believed to be racially motivated—were reported in the media between January 2008 and July 2010. Nine people were murdered—including two minors—and dozens injured. Perpetrators used firearms, Molotov cocktails, or hand grenades in at least twenty-four attacks. Nine incidents of property damage were also reported. (http://www.errc.org/cms/upload/file/attacks-list-in-hungary.pdf ) 4/ Similar anti-Roma grass-roots mobilisation took place in Bulgaria. On September 24, 2011, in Katunitsa, a 19-year-old non-Roma man was murdered by members of an affluent Roma family. As a response to the brutality of the murder, several hundred people from the victim’s home village revolted against the Roma family and destroyed their property. During the following days, massive anti-Roma protests were organised in Bulgarian cities. The murder in Katunitsa served as the symbolic catalyst for the formation of anti-Roma mobilisation across the country. The protests resulted in physical violence and unrest, exemplified anti-Semitic racist sentiments and actions, verbal abuse and scapegoating rhetoric. Raising the issues of ethnicity and race, the public protests escalated into violent rallies toward Roma neighbourhoods across the country (mostly young people, carrying Bulgarian flags, marched into Roma neighbourhoods, and destroyed Roma property); See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BisJFHADTg (last accessed: August 22, 2012) 5/ In the spring of 2011, the Hungarian village of Gyöngyöpata was invaded by extreme-right groups in order to defend ethnic Hungarians from the “Gypsy Crime”. There is a study prepared by the Ecopolis Foundation, which elucidates the role of the local elite in the ethnic conflict; See: http://okopoliszalapitvany.hu/hu/publikacio (last accessed: August 22, 2012).
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