Canada's Bigotry Action Plan

The Harper Conservatives not content to constrain their bigotry towards the Roma to the home front have followed up on their leafleting campaign by purchasing several billboards in Hungary warning those who wish to seek asylum here that “Those people who make a claim without sound reasons will be processed faster and removed faster.”

 

This can only lead to more problems for the Roma living in Hungary as this most assuredly will cause those that wish them harm to view this as an embarrassment visited upon their nation by those they so despise.

 In case you are inclined to take our governments word that the Roma don't face any significant oppression in Hungary you need to take a look at what the mayor of Miskolc, the city targeted for this ad campaign due to it's large Roma population says on this matter.

“Canada cannot send anyone back to Miskolc,” Akos was quoted in one Hungarian news article. “I will not yield on this point!”

Need more evidence, this past August a crowd of about a thousand whipped up into a frenzy at a rally organized by Jobbik the second largest political party represented in the Hungarian parliament proceeded to throw chunks of concrete at houses belonging to Roma

 According to media reports, Jobbik called the march following a ‘brawl’ in late July between members of two households, one Roma and the other non-Roma.

A number of speeches were made by Jobbik MP Gábor Ferenczi, László Toroczkai of the vigilante group Sixty-Four Counties and Attila László of the For a Better Future Civil Guard Association.

Eyewitnesses said that all speeches contained anti-Roma sentiments, and that some were even calling for Hungarians to fight and indirectly urging the eradication of "parasite Gypsies".

In  May of 2011 the Red Cross evacuated the women and children of  Gyöngyöspata when neo-nazis affilliated with Jobbic invaded their villiage




 The situation in Gyöngyöspata has gotten much worse since then as Jobbik has managed to take over the local government.

The town's school is segregated into Roma and Hungarian classes. The town's unemployed, mostly Roma, were among the first Hungarians put to work in a government-backed labour camp last year, where they gathered wood and planted trees under police supervision in exchange for unemployment benefits. Another, more permanent camp now is planned for the Northern spring. And accounts from residents suggest that the Magyar Gárda, the latest incarnation of the party's paramilitary force, now has taken over the police force and the civil defence units common in rural Hungary for centuries. The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union accuses the municipality of fuelling inter-ethnic conflict, making the situation "much worse" than most other towns in rural Hungary.

This is a country Harper and Kenney wish us to believe is a safe haven for the Roma, one where they face no state discrimination or oppression, the evidence screams otherwise. In fact as others have pointed out there are echos of the thirties and forties in all this, a time when 28,000 Roma lost their lives.