Miskolc Mayor Remains Defiant on Roma Evictions Despite Latest Court Ruling
15 February 2016
By Bernard Rorke and Orsolya Szendrey
Despite the latest court ruling against Miskolc authorities, the city mayor Ákos Kriza declared that the local government remains determined to continue with its plans to “eliminate slums on the city’s outskirts,” which is ruling party doublespeak for evicting and expelling Roma from Miskolc.
Photo: MTI
In a ruling on 25 January, the Capital Public Administrative and Labour Court reaffirmed that the treatment of mainly Roma residents in the “numbered streets” of Miskolc violated the principle of non-discrimination; and insisted that the authorities must provide adequate housing for those rendered homeless by its policies. Mayor Kriza, a member of the ruling Fidesz party, said he will appeal to the Supreme Court and described the evictions and demolition of the “numbered streets” to make way for a soccer stadium parking lot as “one of the most important of the city’s policies.”
Bigotry and banishment
Prior to this plan to ethnically cleanse Miskolc, Kriza has been no stranger to controversy when it comes to Roma exclusion. When Canada tightened up its immigration policies in December 2012, and decided to advertise the fact on billboards around Miskolc that promised speedy returns for failed asylum applicants, Kriza announced that “Canada will not send its refugees to Miskolc.”
He vowed to “keep the criminal elements out of Miskolc by checking whether any of the people who left for Canada also took advantage of social assistance from the city or the central government.” Beyond preventing “these criminals from settling in the city,” Kriza declared that “criminals currently residing in Miskolc will be driven out by the authorities.” For good measure he threatened Roma parents returning from Canada that the authorities would take their children away and place them under state supervision. As the Legal Defense Bureau for National and Ethnic Minorities (NEKI) argued at the time, “the words of the mayor of Miskolc actually support the merits of the requests for political asylum.”
In May 2014, local authorities in Miskolc adopted an amendment allowing the municipality to terminate its contract with residents of “low-comfort” social housing as a prelude to demolish the so-called ghettos and slums to make way for a parking lot for one more of Orbán’s soccer stadiums.
The ‘numbered streets’ neighbourhood bears no resemblance to ghettos or slums conjured up in Fidesz election campaigning where posters read: “Do you support the elimination of the slums in Miskolc? Miskolc and the people of Miskolc deserve a quiet and peaceful life. There must not be slums in the 21st century in a European city. The slums must be eliminated once and for all!”
Reporters from abroad were surprised to find no ghetto, no slum, but rather a neighbourhood comprised of pleasant well-maintained rows of houses. One reporter expecting to see something like the Ferentari ghetto in Bucharest described the scene where “breezy, tree-lined streets were a welcome break from the summer heat. The low houses were freshly painted, courtyards swept, kids chucked water balloons and rode bikes. It was hard to imagine this community as an epicenter of crime.”
Families were told they could apply for social housing elsewhere in the town. However this came with conditions which included significant own financial resources; higher rental fees; a 6-month deposit to be paid in advance by the tenants; a rental agreement certified by the public notary (costs covered by the tenants); and costs of renovation to be borne by the tenants. These conditions effectively rendered all those facing eviction ineligible. Tenants were also offered up to 2 million Hungarian Forints (EUR 6,500) to buy homes outside the city limits. The ambition was not just to level the Roma neighbourhood, but also to banish the inhabitants.
Harassment and intimidation
Both Fidesz and the extremist far-right Jobbik party launched signature drives and claimed that several thousand locals enthusiastically backed the plan. Critics denounced the “sham signature drives” as efforts to intimidate those living on the “numbered streets” and strongly imply that the Roma residents were “all criminals”.
In August 2014, the news server Politics.hu reported that an elderly one-legged woman and a Roma family were the first to be evicted and several notices to vacate dwellings were served to other families whose contracts had also expired.
János Kiss, Fidesz group leader on the city council, denied that the evictions were related to the soccer stadium project and insisted that “in Miskolc law and order prevail, the rule of law functions in Miskolc”. Kiss told reporters that the tenants had to move out because “this district is a hotbed of crime, and Fidesz is not a partner in seeing ghetto culture blossom further in Miskolc”.
The evictions are carried out against a background of constant intimidation in the form of inspections by the authorities. These inspections were carried out with the deliberate aim of scaring the tenants, as one tenant described it: “About 60 people storm our settlement at times like that. They check whether the streets are clean and whether the lawn has been mowed in the garden. The youth office checks under what circumstances the children are living here … We are constantly exposed to this psychological terror. We never know if they find something that they don’t like. What happens if they do? They take our children away.” In light of Kriza’s earlier public threats, the fear of children being taken away is a very real one.
Playing the ‘race card’ brought electoral dividends, and Fidesz defeated both the far right Jobbik and the socialist MSZP in the October 2014 local elections. The victors pressed ahead with the clearances and deputy-mayor Gyula Schweickhardt brazenly denied that this was an “ethnic or racial issue”, and stated that for the city leadership it was simply “an endeavour to eradicate an impoverished slum.”
On 8 February a government resolution (12/2015, II.9) was adopted on the expansion of the stadium, confirming that the area where Roma live will be demolished. As a measure of its commitment, the central government dedicated 8 billion Hungarian Forints for the complete renovation of the new Diósgyőr soccer stadium.
Challenges from the courts, ombudsman, equality bodies
A year after the initial amendment came into effect Hungary’s Supreme Court ruled that regulations that oblige tenants to move outside the territory of a city and terminate a tenancy agreement in exchange for monetary compensation are unlawful. The Court emphasised that the regulations constituted discrimination in access to housing and violated the right to privacy, family life and freedom of movement. However, the Court’s decision did not address the policy of evictions as a whole, focusing only on the provision concerning monetary compensation.
In June 2015, a report from the office of the Ombudsman in charge of minority rights described the intrusive inspections by the authorities as illegal raids targeting the Roma: carried out without a legal mandate and often with intent to instill fear in the Roma population; actions which violated the right to fair procedures and privacy; and the right to seek legal remedy as well as equal treatment. In response, Mayor Kriza vowed that the ‘inspections’ would continue.
On 15 July 2015 the Equal Treatment Authority established that the municipality of Miskolc subjected the residents of the “numbered streets” to the threat of homelessness or having to move to other segregated areas, and by doing so, discriminated them on the basis of their social status, financial situation and Roma origin.
The Authority obliged the municipality to put an end to this discrimination by developing an action plan on how it can provide the tenants of the “numbered streets” with adequate housing (by 31 December 2015). The Authority also called on the municipality to stop its ongoing discriminative practice until the action plan is prepared.
Furthermore, the Authority obliged the municipality to prepare (by 30 September 2015) another action plan on how it will provide those with adequate housing who have already become homeless or are concerned by the eviction processes. The Authority also imposed a fine of HUF 500,000 (EUR 1,670) on the municipality.
The Municipality of Miskolc appealed against the Equal Treatment Authority’s decision and continued the evictions. While this case was pending before the court evictions continued despite requests from the Equal Treatment Authority to desist. The city hall refused to suspend the eviction orders and put families out of their homes as late as mid-November 2015 (a week or so before the winter moratorium on evictions kicked in).
In this latest ruling, the Capital Public Administrative and Labour Court reaffirmed that the treatment of the Roma residents in the “numbered streets” was discriminatory.
The real crime is that the authorities have destroyed a community, and banished Roma people from what was a pleasant neighbourhood into segregated slums. The vast majority of families expelled from the “numbered streets” have moved to Lyukóbánya, which is already one of Hungary’s biggest and most rapidly growing segregated Roma settlement. Families under threat of eviction have moved to live with relatives, typically in other segregated neighbourhoods, where people pay rents way over the odds to live in dire overcrowded conditions in run-down houses that lack basic sanitation or proper heating. Others have migrated to Canada to seek asylum.
Dangerous precedents
The courts have ruled yet again that the actions of Mayor Kriza and his unsavoury crew are discriminatory. In June 2015 EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova declared that measures affecting local Roma residents’ accommodation were not in line with the European Union’s framework strategy or Hungary’s Roma strategy.
In July Michael Georg Link, director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), criticized what he called efforts to force Roma out of Miskolc, and insisted that “In the provision of social housing, the authorities must adhere to OSCE commitments prohibiting discrimination, and to international human rights standards on the right to adequate housing.” Link was particularly concerned that such discriminatory measures “could set a dangerous precedent and provide a negative example for others,” and called on the national authorities to bring a halt to the evictions. Since that time there has been no halt to the evictions, no action taken by the national government, and further defiance and determination by Mayor Kriza to evict and displace Roma in Miskolc.
This does set a dangerous precedent, and last year ERRC requested that the European Commission take action to press the Hungarian authorities to halt these violations of fundamental rights. In the face of the Miskolc mayor’s determination to persist with evictions in defiance of court rulings, and the failure of the national government to censure their local party members, it is time for the European Commission to initiate infringement proceedings against Hungary for this flagrant breach of EU law.
