Miskolc: desperately seeking asylum
12 November 2014
The town of Miskolc in north-eastern Hungary is at the segregation game again. The town, once the centre of coal, iron and steel industries, and once a major employer for thousands Roma is not new to controversies regarding segregation. This is the town that was forced by the High Court to shut down segregating schools.
Last week a busload of Roma from Miskolc caused a huge media sensation when they turned up in Switzerland and applied for asylum. They are fleeing in the face of evictions from homes they have occupied in some cases for generations. They are seeking asylum from the ever present threat of evictions and general harassment, as well as conditions of unemployment, dire poverty and hopelessness.
Their story took a new turn earlier this year, when the municipality twice amended the local social housing rules in May and June with the explicitly communicated purpose to rid the town of as many Roma families as possible. The pretext is to shut down shantytowns and ghettoes. The solution proposed was to offer 1.5-2 million HUF (€4,850 - €6,460) to families to buy properties outside town. The families leaving would of course shut themselves off from municipal social and health services, the children would have to move to new schools etc.
It would have been easy to say that there was no funding allocated to this program whatsoever in the city budget, we could cry bluff, electioneering by the ruling FIDESZ Mayor ahead of last October’s municipal elections. It also would have been quite understandable, both JOBBIK and MSZP were closing down on them, both with credible segregationist rhetoric and candidates. (The election was since comfortably won by the incumbent) And we could be right if there was a single comment from the central government making reference to national and international rules and legislation which render the municipal decrees illegal, and instructing the Council to repeal them. Even now after the elections, there has been no such comment forthcoming from the government.
In the meantime, the municipal machinery harassing the Roma has switched to a higher gear, albeit not using the decree mentioned above, not a single forint has been paid to those evicted. Tenants in social housing units receive official letters concerning their leases; eviction orders without proper legal grounds and procedure are issued even to owners of houses in the designated areas of the city. A family with four children returning from Canada was refused to register at the grandmother’s house with no explanation, making it impossible for them to register at the local school or medical centre.
The biggest weapon of harassment is the ‘welfare raid’. A group of policemen, social workers, public health officials, and representatives of utility companies turn up at a house unannounced to check if all documents are in order, and if the household is in a ‘reasonable’ state. They hand out fines, put children under observation, pending taking them into state care, and threaten that it will be worse next time.
But is this all legal? According to the ERRC, the answer is an emphatic no. In a Memorandum sent to the European Commission in July we claim that the Municipal decrees constitute an infringement of the Hungarian Acts on Social Services as well as Public Administration. They are also an infringement of the EU Racial Equality Directive and several other pieces of EU legislation, as well as rulings of the European Court of Human Rights.
The unanswered questions abound. What will happen to the families in the likely event of their being refused asylum in Switzerland? Will the European Union, and perhaps even Switzerland, continue to allow their taxpayers’ money to be used in Miskolc for development, that appears to be segregating and discriminatory?
Are the representatives of the Hungarian Government unaware of the situation? Or even worse, are they colluding in it? Should they not have at least tried to avoid the embarrassment of Hungarian citizens turning up in Switzerland to request asylum, rightfully claiming that their own government ignores their rights and welfare?
Are these events something special in Hungary, or in these times is this just business as usual?
