“Give gas” was the original name for the Goj motorbikers parade intended for Apr. 21, a day when Hungary’s large Jewish community commemorates the Holocaust in the Peace March.

The Gojs (which means gentile – non-Jew – in Hebrew) planned to ride in front of Budapest’s largest synagogue. Only energetic protests from Jewish leaders prompted authorities to prohibit the event, which took place after changes to the original route and name.

Hungary, a country of 10 million now governed by the conservative Fidesz party of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, had not seen such overt expressions of far-right ideas since the infamous 1940s.

Last November, the ultranationalist Jobbik deputy Márton Gyöngyösi, whose party obtained 17 percent of the vote in the 2010 legislative elections, suggested that the names of Hungarians of Jewish origin should be kept on a registry as they constitute “a national security risk.” He later corrected his statement to mean dual Israeli-Hungarian citizens.

The are more parallels with the 1940s: during the last few years paramilitary militias have marched in Hungarian villages with large gypsy communities in order to intimidate them and bring a message of law and order. Several instances of physical aggression, gunshot wounds and fires have been linked to these marches.

In the case of the marginalised gypsy community, representing up to 7 percent of the population, authorities have done little to protect them from abuse, as was noted in a report published last year by Amnesty International.

Moreover, high-profile supporters of the government have contributed to the atmosphere of hate prevailing in the country: Zsolt Bayer, one of Fidesz’s founders and a close friend of Orbán, wrote last January in the pro-government paper Magyar Hirlap that gypsies “ought not to exist” and called for an immediate solution to the ‘problem’ “regardless of the method.”

Bayer added that running over a gypsy child is correct as long as one “does not think about stopping and steps hard on the accelerator.”

Orbán failed to publicly condemn any of these incidents. Critics claim the Prime Minister fears alienating the most extremist sections of his electorate, which may join the ranks of the far-right Jobbik.

Instead, Orbán has been more preoccupied with purging the various political, judicial, cultural and media institutions of dissenting elements, empowered by Fidesz’s spectacular electoral victory in 2010, which gave it a two-third constitutional majority in parliament.

The overhaul of the country’s institutions has been justified with an alleged need to cleanse public life of the lingering influence of communism.

The government’s actions have also alienated the country from the EU: this month saw Fidesz officials involved in verbal disputes with Viviane Reding, vice-president of the European Commission, over the country’s constitutional reforms, which were also the subject of fresh debates in the European Parliament.

The latest constitutional reform has been criticised for criminalising the homeless and favouring the government during electoral campaigns. These same laws had been presented separately in parliament and rejected by the Constitutional Court, leading the government to include them in the country’s fundamental law.

Moreover, the Court has lost its power to revise future constitutional amendments, severely weakening the formal separation of powers in Hungary and leading the European Commission to ring the alarm bell.

Yet analysts claim that talk of Hungary turning into a dictatorship is misplaced: “What we have is a narrow political elite riding mass waves of disenchantment with liberal democracy and economic neoliberalism that manages to establish a rule by decree where there is no space for dissent, for participatory decision-making or consensus-building,” Gábor Halmai, a sociologist and human rights activist told IPS.

“However, this strong-handed politics is supported by a very large and mobilised part of society.”

András Deák, an analyst at the Budapest-based Hungarian Institute of International Affairs, similarly claims the Orbán government “has clearly authoritarian features and obviously tests the limits of democratic governance,” but points out that “all these measures were legitimate in terms of domestic legislation.”

Deák moreover notes the uniqueness of the Hungarian case. “It is difficult to find any post-World War II government in Europe, at which the wish to shake up the country’s political system coincided with such an overwhelming electoral legitimation,” he told IPS.

This may be one of the reasons why Brussels has refrained from going beyond public criticism and infringement procedures which, while common to many other European states, are accumulating at an alarming pace in the case of Hungary.

Moreover, anti-EU sentiments are on the rise in Hungary, with large swaths of the population feeling “their interests are at odds with those of Brussels,” says Deák.

This was made particularly clear by some of the government’s economic measures, namely the taxing of banks and multinational corporations to benefit the middle-class and the national bourgeoise.

The measures were criticised by the EU but enjoyed substantial popular support.

With the EU angered, Orbán’s latest strategy involves attracting more Chinese and Russian investment, coupled by statements criticising the “decadence” of the Western capitalist model. As long as the EU remains merged in a financial crisis, many Hungarians will follow his lead.

Yomara receives tutoring in the Portada Alta school in Málaga, Spain. Credit: Inés Benítez/IPS

By Inés Benítez
MÁLAGA, Spain , Dec 11 2012 (IPS)

Daniel introduces himself as a “gypsy and guitarist,” Francisco José wants to become a doctor, Yomara timidly says she likes to cook, and María has no idea what she wants to study.

The 12 to 17-year-old students at this school in the southern Spanish city of Málaga belong to the Roma or gypsy community, which is marked by high dropout and truancy rates.

Despite “noteworthy progress” in educational coverage among this ethnic group in the last 30 years, only 20 percent of youngsters who start secondary school – the first four years of which are compulsory, from ages 12 to 16 – go on to graduate, Humberto García, with the Gypsy Secretariat Foundation (FSG), told IPS.

And he added that not all Roma children enrol in secondary school.

The Council of Europe estimates that the Roma number 725,000 in Spain – 1.57 percent of the population of 46 million.

Although members of this ethic group can be found in every trade and profession, many work as street vendors in markets or as waste pickers of scrap metal and cardboard, which they sell for recycling.

“I didn’t go to high school and I don’t want my kids to be like me; I want them to be able to relate to others and become something in life,” 44-year-old Antonia Martín told IPS.

She is the mother of Yomara (16), José (15) and Jesús (24). She also has a two-year-old grandson.

At her side, her husband Antonio Campos, whose parents were basket-makers and who has worked at a golf course on the Málaga coast since he was 17, says “the gypsy mentality has to change. They think they have to live like our grandparents did. But today there are more opportunities, and we can live better, with more education, and receiving more respect.

“Being a waste picker, junk collector or street vendor is not a good life – it’s feast today, famine tomorrow,” said Campos, who called for “breaking down the barriers” imposed by the traditional lifestyle of Spain’s gypsies, or calós.

Caló is the language of Spain’s gypsies, who gradually lost their Romani language. It is also another name for the Roma community in this country.

In Spain, the term gitano or gypsy is not considered derogatory, although that does not mean that this country is free of the discrimination suffered by the Roma, Europe’s largest ethnic minority.

Until the end of General Francisco Franco’s dictatorship in 1975 and the adoption of a new constitution in 1978, the Roma people did not have the same rights as the rest of the population.

But since then, school enrolment has climbed from extremely low levels to 93 percent today.

“Education and employment are two essential factors for the integration of the gypsy community,” said the FSG’s García, whose Promociona (Promote) programme works with students, families and schools to lower dropout and repetition rates.

The programme is active in 300 schools in 27 towns and cities around Spain. In Málaga the programme has a staff of four women who work with around 50 students and their families and teachers.

The four workers arrange home visits with the parents and tutoring workshops in the classroom, like the one that brings together Daniel, Yomara, María, Francisco José and other students in the Portada Alta school in Málaga every Tuesday.

“We are focused on fighting truancy and getting the families involved, because they don’t see the importance of education,” biology teacher Isabel Passas, from the Guadalmedina school, where 80 percent of the students are Roma, told IPS.

Passas lamented that a majority of the girls drop out by the age of 14, when they are married off in arranged marriages and start having children of their own.

Martín doesn’t want her 16-year-old daughter Yomara to get married yet. “I won’t let her get married so young, and she doesn’t want to either. It’s really backwards to get married and have children so young; there’s time enough for that,” she said.

When she was little, Martín, who comes from a family of 10 children, used to help her mother sell fruit and clothing on the streets.

Many parents depend on their children’s help in street vending, and pull them out of school early, the vice principal of the Portada Alta school, María Victoria Toscazo, told IPS.

The economic crisis that is rocking Spain has also hurt the traditional open-air markets.

According to Campos, who has relatives who work as market vendors, “people are hardly selling anything, and competition (from immigrants) is really tough.”

The study “Gypsy population, employment and social inclusion”, published this year by the FSG, reported that unemployment among the Roma in Spain grew nearly threefold between 2005 and 2011, to 36.4 percent.

And while unemployment among the Roma was five percentage points above the overall unemployment rate in 2005, today the difference is 14 percentage points.

“The crisis has affected everyone, but it has had a more severe impact on the most vulnerable,” said García.

Moreover, “society still has a really negative view of us, and social rejection is strong,” he added.

It is hard to encourage Roma youngsters to continue studying when they are aware that discrimination will likely make it difficult for them to find a job.

Language and literature teacher Antonio Blanco, who has spent four years teaching Roma children at the Guadalmedina school, stressed the importance of forging emotional ties and creating a pleasant environment, to keep children in school.

Nevertheless, the Roma in Spain are better off than in the rest of the European Union.

“There are problems, but not as many as in France, Romania or Portugal,” a source at the FSG told IPS.

Like the rest of the population, Spain’s Roma people are covered by the universal public healthcare system and have access to affordable housing programmes for low-income families.

Most Roma live in working-class neighbourhoods, and only a small proportion actually live in slums. But the stereotype of the wandering, thieving gypsy lingers.

The question is how far to integrate in a society that discriminates against them. Martín’s relatives say she and her family are “apayaos” (roughly meaning assimilated to the “payo” or non-gypsy culture).

Her husband argues that “gypsies should not be all bunched together, but spread around, to adapt to another way of life.”