Attacks on Roma suggest slump is fomenting racism

POLITICIANS AND human rights groups across eastern Europe have been pointing to nationalist riots in the Czech Republic and deadly attacks on Hungarian Roma as signs that racist violence could increase as the region enters an economic downturn.

The Czech Republic saw its worst street fighting in almost a decade this month, when 700 members of the far-right Workers' Party clashed with 1,000 riot police in the town of Litvinov, where they were prevented from marching into a mostly Roma area on the anniversary of a 1939 Nazi crackdown on Czechoslovak universities.

More than a dozen people were injured as police replied with tear gas and water cannon to a hail of bricks and petrol bombs.

These were hurled by Workers' Party members and locals disillusioned with grinding poverty and high unemployment, who blame the Roma, or gypsies, for much local crime.

"It is tied to . . . economic worsening not only in the Czech Republic, but also in the rest of Europe, because all kinds of attacks have happened in a number of other countries," said Czech prime minister Miroslav Topolanek.

Tension is growing in Hungary, where two attacks have left four gypsies dead and intensified debate about the role of nationalist groups like the Magyar Garda (Hungarian Guard) - which members call a patriotic organisation defending traditional values, and critics a mob of far-right thugs.

This month, two Roma were shot dead in their houses in northeast Hungary. Two more were killed and two of their children injured when a grenade was thrown into their home in the southern town of Pecs.

"Such actions reveal serious and deep-rooted problems of racism and discrimination against Roma at the heart of modern Europe," said Githu Muigai, UN special rapporteur on racism and xenophobia, amid reports of rising far-right violence in the Baltic states, Russia and Ukraine.

The Magyar Garda has denied involvement in the Hungarian attacks and insists it is not racist or violent, but has called for a crackdown on the "Roma crime" it claims plagues Hungary.

Human rights activists, Roma politicians and Hungary's socialist government have accused the group of stirring up racial tension, however, and criticise it for marching through poor white neighbourhoods and Roma areas wearing black uniforms and insignia reminiscent of the country's wartime fascist regime.

Most of the EU's eight to 12 million Roma live in eastern Europe, where many endure poor conditions in housing, education, healthcare and employment.

"It's clear there's an uptick in violent attacks . . . There does seem to be more activity in extremist groups and neo-Nazi groups," said Robert Kushen of the European Roma Rights Centre.