FenTiger

On BBC iPlayer there's a documentary about Gypsy Kids taken From Home! If you can access it I suggest you watch it. I'm curious to know .... is this really happening. Apparently, these gypsy kids are taken to a care home .... and are being abused by not only other gypsy kids but care workers too! It's quite shocking. I was alerted to this programme by a friend of mine. To be honest he thought this really wasn't happening and the reporter was a left winger trying to stir things up but from my personal experience visiting Hungary I could clearly see alot of Roma were living in extreme poverty!

Sachina

Here you go .....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05x5rh4

plus a couple of newspaper articles ...

https://budapestbeacon.com/roma-chil...gated-schools/

Documentary explores anti-Gypsy crisis in Hungary | Daily Mail Online

Peter_in_Hungary

Whilst I would not condone the events detailed in the articles, this only tells one side of the story. The communist regime destroyed the Gypsy culture by making then settle in villages against their wishes and having destroyed their culture replaced it with nothing. This started the problems.

I have found that there are 2 classes of Gypsy, those that work and those that don't. -A bit of an over simplification, but there it is. The Gypsys that work generally have no time for those that don't! Truancy has been a big problem within the Gypsy group to the extent that the government linked child allowance to school attendance. If the kids don't attend school the allowance was cut. This was decried as discrimination by the Gypsy community as it was mostly Gypsy families that had their allowance cut, although the plan applied to everyone.

Segregation in schools happens but usually more by either geographical reasons (a Gypsy village will have a Gypsy school) and by non-Gypsy parents moving their children to another school. In some schools behaviour from the Gypsy kids was so bad that the teachers could not teach. The solution was that the schools hired 'minders' from the Gypsy community (chosen by the Gypsy community) to attend the classrooms to keep order (in any way that the minder saw fit) Because this was Gypsy on Gypsy this was seen as acceptable and provided the only practical solution to the problem.

The articles quote that children of all ages were taught the same thing, maybe, but in the Hungarian school system if a child failed the year then the year had to be repeated. This would mean that you could easily have 3 years age difference in the same class. (This has now changes for the younger classes) And yes some would tip out of school not being able to read properly - but the same happens in the UK!

Sexual exploitation happens (as it did/does in the UK with the authorities turning a blind eye!!) and whilst it quotes a 15 year old working with a pimp boyfriend it does not say if the pimp was Gypsy. This is not to condone the events, but given there is a Gypsy community, elected Gypsy councils and so on what are the Gypsys doing for themselves?

There is a Gypsy problem in Hungary but it is a political hot potato. Positive discrimination does not work and in any case there is no such thing as positive discrimination, just discrimination! Various programs have been tried, one program comes to mind where a Gypsy council was given significant sums to do works and a year or so in the (Gypsy) leaders were prosecuted and jailed for embezzlement.

In previous years large families could live well on the child benefit and maternity allowances, to the point that it was not worth anyone in the family working. If you are getting 2-300,000huf a month allowances when the minimum wage was 80,000huf, what would be the point of going to work! And Gypsys at the bottom end of society usually had large families.

Now there is a system whereby to get supplementary income (due to long term unemployment) people are required to do community work. Our local policeman says this works very well because the claimants are off the streets and as a result the (petty) crime rate has gone down. He says it works in 2 ways, they are off the street during the day and they are too tired in the evening to go thieving. (This scheme applies to everyone). The left politicians in Brussels have said that this scheme is wrong and people should not be required to work for their support. I disagree!!

Yes there are problems with and within the Gypsy community but IMO the Gypsy community could do a lot more to help themselves.

Rant over

Peter_in_Hungary

Oh and the exploration of gypsies by gypsies in the UK
BBC News - Panorama - The secret lives of Britain's child beggars

And problems in Italy
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44632472

Many Italians are exasperated by pickpockets and thieves from this community. But some Roma claim they don't have a choice. "Some of us steal to survive," says Giordana Sulemanovic. She came to Italy from Bosnia, she is unemployed and has 11 children.
And https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44966396

Spain also had problems
Gypsy Child Thieves - Four Corners

I wouldn't want to stereotype all Gypsies but from the above it would seem that the gypsy community has a case to answer..........

Pilis Nemzeti Park Fella

I went to a small cigany tolalkozo a couple of weeks ago, it was local & I know from past experience that everybody's welcome and it's normally fairly safe. A few years ago they had to call the police (as in: about 10 police cars showed up & it got on the news) as a couple of families got too drunk and decided to sort out their differences with the old fisticuffs, it was basically a mass brawl. This year it was just music and dancing on a stage, yes everybody drinking including yours truly but plenty of non-gypsies there as well, numbers not too huge this year, maybe 250.

They never bothered me too much in the past. The worst we had was somebody broke into a shed and stole an old lawnmower. One year I was dozing in the garden and heard voices. What they do is cut a hole in the garden fence and sneak in to see if there's anything to steal. Anyway, I waited until they got a bit closer then went noisy - they were just 15 year old kids or thereabouts, my rellies said the adults send out the kids to steal as if they get caught they won't get much in the way of punishment.

One year, some gypsies came round and sold me a bag of plums. Next thing, my very nice neighbour came round and said don't do it again! Another year we got the driveway modernised with those grey block bricks, that was a couple of gypsies and the work was excellent, friendly & the cost reasonable.

Our house has bars on all the accessible windows and a grille for the balcony doors, plus we're surrounded by permanent Hungarian neighbours, so even though the house is empty most of the year, it should in theory be pretty secure and so far so good (touch wood). Not that there's an awful lot to steal, though we all 5 run computers out here etc so that would be a pain, but with any luck we're secure enough.

Peter_in_Hungary

That's what the Romanian gypsies do in Spain (according to a BBC program) for the same reason, the treatment of juveniles is v. lenient i.e. nothing. Unfortunately the law can't hold the parents responsible for the actions of their children. (An exception here is that if children skip school the parents loose their child benefit)
You only have to be a bit more secure and a bit less attractive than your neighbours.