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Police and anti-Roma racism

By Liz Fekete

1 August 1997

The ombudsman for national and ethnic minorities has told parliament that the most severe form of discrimination against minorities is prejudicial treatment during police investigation and that this phenomenon concerns mainly Roma.

Investigation follows violence in Szombathely

The Vas County Prosecutor's Office of Investigation has launched in inquiry after an official complaint against the police in Szombathely was filed by a representative of the Roma self-government.

The complaint comes after an incident in Szombathely, near the western border with Austria, on 15 February, when a group of seven Roma and non-Roma were arrested by a Budapest police unit of five plainclothes police officers with shaved heads and subjected to severe beatings at the police station. In addition, two minors were detained and their legal guardians not informed.

Forced confessions

At the police station, the Roma allege that they were insulted with taunts like 'stinking Gypsy'. They claim that violence was used against them in an attempt to extract a confession which would have implicated one of their number, ZZ, with stealing a wallet from an Austrian tourist. One of the arrested men claims that he had his fingers bent and was beaten and kicked until he signed a piece of paper which he had not read. A pregnant woman alleges that she had her hair pulled and was hit in the stomach.

A doctor at Markusovszky hospital documented head and abdominal injuries to ZZ, who alleges that he lost consciousness, vomited blood and lost clumps of hair during the beating. Police officers threatened to beat him to death if he did not sign a statement.The police chief in Szombathely told the daily newspaper, Magyar Hirlap, that the use of force was justified and that his department would work with the Budapest police on similar operations in the future.

Violence follows arrest on suspicion

The Roma Press Centre says that a Roma man suffered a broken arm and a broken nose after being violently arrested by police in the town of Mandatanya, north-western Hungary, and wrongfully accused of stealing a chicken.

Roma Rights, Spring 1997

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