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The truth has won!
A Roma woman in Gyöngyöspata said when we asked her about the Mansion trial on Tuesday. In his voice, however, he felt release and joy. With the court decision, the tension in Gyöngyöspata has not yet passed.
On Tuesday, the Mansion rejected the request by the municipality of Gyöngyöspata and the Hatvan Tank District for a review, according to which they wanted to liquidate the compensation legally awarded in kind instead of money (education, training).
According to the decision, they will have to pay a total of HUF 99 million to the 60 Gyöngyöspata Roma students who were illegally separated from their peers at Demeter Primary School in Nekcsei and provided them with a lower quality education.
Contradictions sharpened
László Horváth made the ruling party’s position clear a few hours after the verdict. “This decision is bad and unfair,” said a Fidesz MP from the region. At the same time, he promised that an amendment to the law would soon prevent a similar decision from being made in the future.
And the head of the Foundation for Disadvantaged Children (CFCF), which represents the plaintiff’s opportunity for Roma families, called the Curia precedent setting. Erzsébet Mohácsi emphasized that this is the highest amount of compensation awarded by the court for segregated education. Furthermore, the judgment made clear that compensation can only be provided in cash, compensation cannot be settled in cash.
We went to Gyöngyöspata to ask those involved how the decision was received and what the awarded damages would be spent on. Obviously they are happy with the “victory”, but there is still a lot of tension and fear in them because they feel exposed to extreme attacks. Jobbik’s departure in 2011 is still vividly remembered here, just as the government campaign earlier this year was not forgotten.
Earlier in the morning local businessmen and farmers are said to have lined up on the gypsy line to get day laborers to work with their cars. However, once the community was subjected to cross-fire by the government, these opportunities abruptly ceased and the epidemic only exacerbated the situation for those who live here.
Non-Roma consider it unfair
The legitimacy of the compensation is still being disputed in non-Roma areas. “The verdict was outraged,” said an elderly man on Wednesday morning after leaving the pharmacy in front of the school. “There was a reason they separated those children.”
They were not isolated because they were gypsies, but because they were unmanageable. They couldn’t be disciplined. “
Ms. Lászlón Iványi has a similar opinion on the decision, we also met her in the central part of the agreement. “I do not consider that the trial is fair, neither against the city nor against us. From there, the judges don’t see what’s really going on here.
If they had wanted to learn, they would have had the opportunity, but they did not want to.
The Roma would move if they had the chance
Despite the fact that we are looking for those involved here, the settlement is divided into two areas, there are no Roma living along the main road. After a short briefing, we head to the affected families next to the convenience store, and as we move forward, the quality of the road gradually deteriorates and the concrete soon runs out. “Everyone here is happy with the decision, but what has been taken from the children can no longer be recovered later,” says the first man we met on a street populated with Roma.
They are not noticeably happy with our arrival here, journalists have invaded them as a team in the past few months, and we are still dodging with other staff. Many people don’t even want to make a statement, those who speak do so, simply take it anonymously and ask not to photograph their home.
They live in ruined, half-finished houses. Most would move out of here if given the chance. But there is no one who has a hard time accumulating enough money to move downtown will soon hit a wall.
IT WAS SPOKEN THAT ROME CANNOT BUY A HOUSE IN THE CENTRAL PART OF THE CITY, SELLERS REJECT THEIR OFFER.
Then, generally, the municipality or a circle of friends linked to the city government buy these houses. It is also said that although the municipality has more real estate, it is not even rented to the Roma who need it.
They get an average of a million and a half
However, here in some houses three generations live together, in crowds, in terribly humble conditions. We also spoke to several stakeholders in the damages lawsuit, almost all of whom said they wanted to spend the money on housing. Some would renovate their home, others would move, it is questionable, of course, what the compensation will suffice for. Students receive an average of 1.5 million forints, the amount depends on who has studied for how many semesters in circumstances that are considered illegal.
The smallest amount is 350 thousand, the largest is 3.5 million forint.
There are families in which several children have been involved in the lawsuit for damages, and the three children of one woman also attended the local school when the Roma were placed in a separate class. He says they completed eighth grade elementary school and then went to vocational high school, but they soon dropped out.
Teachers were told that their knowledge corresponded to the level of a fourth grade elementary student.
They took our childhood
“What have you accomplished in life?” – A woman in her thirties, who is also involved in the lawsuit, turns to me and is now cleaning the street. When I answer him, he is looking at me and he says:
You see, we didn’t have a chance to do that.
This money does not return our childhood, he adds bitterly. She is now the mother of several children, but has so far been unable to move out of her parental home.
You want to buy a house without money.
Dávid Berki, who was able to find a job at construction sites after segregated school, also collects independent housing. He relates that there were Roma classes downstairs, non-Roma classes upstairs, and that the Roma could not even go to the bathroom. It was also the case that Roma children had to go to school in the afternoon and they were banned from swimming lessons and school events. They were taught in combined classes on the ground floor, they were taught together in 5-6-7. class students
They take the non-Roma out of school.
Segregation within the school is now said to have ceased, although the school itself has become virtually segregated, because non-Roma, or as Hungarians call it here, take their children to another settlement.
“Why don’t you pay the children who were expelled from here by the Roma?
Why don’t they pay the bus tickets to go to school in Gyöngyös?
a woman resents when we walk to the mayor’s office, again in the central part of the city. According to him, if the judges had tried to teach at this school, they would have been judged differently.
Meanwhile, a young Roma man, with a paper in his hand, comes face to face and goes to apply for public work in the office. It turns out that you are also entitled to compensation. He says he couldn’t do all eight generals, so he can’t even go to a factory to work. He is forced to apply for a public job from which he cannot earn a living. He wants to obtain a license and a profession of money in order to get out of the gypsy line.
Payment will be agreed next week.
We also wanted to speak to the pro-government mayor of Gyöngyöspata, Lászlón Hevér. At the mayor’s office, customer reception is suspended due to the epidemic, but a young employee called to deliver the mayor’s message: We are looking for him by email.
All that has been revealed to our question is that we are not the first to try, someone else was already looking for the mayor on Wednesday. Of course, we e-mailed our questions to Lászlóné Hevér that afternoon, but no response was received until our article was published.
However, we learned from Lilla Farkas, an attorney representing the applicant’s students, who
Legal representatives will sit down early next week to negotiate payment.
Even he could not say when the people in Gyöngyöspata would receive the money, it is questionable how the municipality and the tank district generate the money. The payment is unlikely to bring reconciliation to Gyöngyöspata, but it could at least end the lawsuit that has been going on for many years.
(Cover image: Bődey János / Index)
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