The most solidly built structure in the Roma ghetto in Ostrovany is the wall dividing it from the rest of the village, built with €13,000 (£11,300) of public funds to separate those living in conditions of medieval squalor from their better-off non-Roma neighbours.

The Hungarian embassy in Washington opened two exhibitions on Monday local time, marking the International Holocaust Remembrance Day which is celebrated on January 27.

The United States is ready to share its experiences gained through the integration of Afro-Americans to help Hungary close the gap between its Roma minority and majority society, Lajos Korozs, Hungary's deputy social minister learnt during talks in Washington on Tuesday.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Mayors and local school authorities in Slovakia and other central and eastern European states still favour segregation of Roma children, despite national policies adopted by the central governments, experts warned on Monday.

Bulgarian police were investigating a gathering allegedly involving members of the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis in the central Bulgarian town of Asenovgrad, Bulgarian news agency Focus said on September 2009

A group of 400-500 Roma demonstrated on Monday to demand the resignation of mayor of Edeleny, NE Hungary, over recent "defamatory statements" about Roma women.

Instead of a conspiracy of silence in the case of an MP who claimed Roma women deliberately harmed their unborn children in order to receive higher state benefits, the leadership of main opposition Fidesz should take steps which are conversant with democracy, the spokesman of the conservative Democratic Forum (MDF) said on Wednesday.

Dominic Hughes investigates the rise of the far right anti-Roma Jobbik party in Hungary and finds parallels between the Roma and another impoverished community, Australia's Aboriginals.

Over 500 people, including public dignitaries, gathered in the cemetery of Kisleta (NE) on Friday afternoon, to attend the funeral of Maria Balogh, the Roma woman shot dead by unidentified perpetrators in her home early on Monday.

Amnesty International said in a statement on Sunday that it is deeply concerned about the growing number of attacks against Roma people in Hungary and called for effective police investigation into the attacks.

Hungary's Justice Minister Tibor Draskovics on Monday summoned Hungary's national police chief to discuss the investigation of a Roma killing which took place earlier in the day.

A 45-year-old Roma woman was shot dead, her 13-year-old daughter was seriously injured in Kisleta (NE Hungary) early on Monday, according to information from the town's local government.

A Hungarian Roma woman was shot dead and her daughter seriously injured when their house in the eastern village of Kisleta was attacked overnight, police and local authorities said on Monday.

A Roma woman was shot dead, her 13-year-old daughter was seriously injured in Kisleta (NE Hungary) early on Monday, according to information from the town's local government.

Panicked Roma communities in Hungary are forming self-defence groups after a spate of attacks on their settlements claimed five lives in 10 months. The murders have led police to double the size of a task force investigating anti-Roma crimes and police sources believe the same group may be responsible for attacks using rifles and home-made explosives. Far-right groups have denied any links to the attacks, but emphasise the need to fight "Gypsy crime".

Hungary's national police chief told MTI on Saturday that he had increased the reward for information leading to the perpetrators of recent attacks against the Roma to 50 million forints.

TISZALOK, Hungary — Jeno Koka was a doting grandfather and dedicated worker on his way to his night-shift job at a chemical plant last week when he was shot dead at his doorstep. To his killer, he was just a Gypsy, and that seems to have been reason enough.

Police are investigating the death of a Roma man who died from a gunshot wounds to the head and heart at dawn on Thursday.

International Roma Day is an opportunity call attention to the history, experience, and human rights of Europe's largest ethnic minority.

Today, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM) issue the following joint call to governments, intergovernmental organisations and civil society to step up their efforts in tackling the human rights violations that the Roma continue to face in Europe.

The citizens of Aquila and nearby municipalities hit by the earthquake are mourning their dead. Those left homeless are being offered shelter and aid in hotels and hostels. Many Roma families living in makeshift accommodation were also hit by the earthquake, with the same impartial cruelty, but no shelter is being offered to them and they are being turned away when they approach the civil protection units or the hotels for help.

Hungary's MEP Viktoria Mohacsi received the International Women of Courage Award for 2009 in Budapest on Tuesday. The award was handed over by US Ambassador to Hungary April H. Foley in recognition of Mohacsi's efforts for the Roma minority all over Europe and her fight against aggression, segregation and stereotypes.

The government and the city of Budapest have decided to open a new Roma cultural centre in Budapest's Szentkiralyi Street (District 8), deputy mayor Csaba Horvath told MTI on Tuesday.

Despite European Union legislation on the subject, Europe's Roma remain the victim of discrimination and abuse, as much in the media as in society at large. In Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary, not to mention Italy, it is the media that more often than not instigate the witch hunts.

First common European and third common Greek congress of Roma People was held in Thessaloniki during the weekend, Katimerini informs.

Hungary's police have stepped up an investigation into a spate of attacks against Roma residents which have prompted concerns that the increase in violence against the Roma is connected to the rise in radical nationalism in the country.

The killings of two Roma people in a grenade attack in southern Hungary sparked a dispute on Wednesday between police and the minority ombudsman, who said it was premature to rule out racial prejudice.

More than 500 supporters of the Czech far-right Workers' Party clashed with police on Monday when they marched on a Roma suburb of the northern Czech town of Litvinov.

ROME (Reuters) - Facebook said on Friday it had removed several pages from its site used by Italian neo-Nazis to incite violence after European politicians accused the Internet social networking site of allowing a platform to racists.

On November 10, 2008, the Fraternal Association of European Roma Law Enforcement Officers (FAERLEO) began a “Campaign for Roma Law Enforcement” with a press conference at the British Embassy in Budapest. The campaign aims to combat prejudices and encourage young Roma to pursue careers in law enforcement. In an interview with RomNet, Captain György Makula, FAERLEO’ s Secretary General, spoke about the goals of his organization and its campaign, which is supported by the British Embassy, the U.S. Embassy, the Open Society Institute, and the Training Department of the Hungarian Ministry of Justice and Law Enforcement.

Istvan Haller, member of the National Council for Combating Discrimination, who is on hunger strike since October 2nd, for observance of the ECHR decisions in the Hadareni case, stated that he ceases this kind of protest following the Government commitment to solve his demands.

The musicians from Hungary who made gypsy rhythms popular worldwide, are in India to trace their roots.

Snjezana Bokulic, MRG's Europe and Central Asia Programmes Coordinator, writes on the 'missed opportunity' at the recent historic EU Roma summit organised by the European Commission in Brussels.

A colourful crowd gathered under a grey sky Saturday on a square in the windswept and eerily deserted centre of Budapest. A non-political alliance of civil organisations had called for thousands to assemble on Erzsébet tér and march down Andrássy út in a show of solidarity against the encroachment of an increasingly vocal extreme right wing into Hungarian public discourse and the streets. Tarka Magyar (Multicoloured Magyar) was the name chosen for a movement that includes Amnesty International and many homosexual and Roma organisations.

Hungary's political elite should step up efforts to protect the Roma against a revival of the country's radical right, said a Roma local government official at the commemoration of the 64th anniversary of the WWII Roma Holocaust in Budapest on Saturday.

Hungary's minority ombudsman on Friday said the attitude of Hungary's mainstream society to minorities reminded him of Germany in the 1930s.

The decision by the government of Silvio Berlusconi to fingerprint Roma in Italy was based on "good will" but "mistakes were made during the implementation", says Lívia Járóka, a Hungarian MEP from the centre-right EPP-ED group, in an interview with EurActiv Hungary. [Note: Following misunderstandings, EurActiv.com has decided to modify the title of this interview.]

Italian newspapers, an archbishop and civil liberties campaigners expressed shock and revulsion on Monday after photographs were published of sunbathers apparently enjoying a day at the beach just meters from where the bodies of two drowned Gypsy girls were laid out on the sand. (CNN)

Slovakia's social reform has improved the situation of the Roma population there, head of Hungary's National Roma Government (OCO) Orban Kolompar told MTI on Saturday, after a delegation spent several days in Slovakia studying the reform.

The prime minister's commissioner for Roma affairs Laszlo Teleki thanked to U.S. ambassador April H. Foley on Wednesday that the U.S. authorities had closed down a Hungarian far-right news portal that was run on an American server.

The National Gypsy Council last week complained that the policy recently implemented by some local governments of demanding community work in return for social security benefits is anti-Roma.

Politicians have an endless capacity for sweeping awkward issues under the carpet. But an unsolved problem cannot be made to disappear entirely and sooner or later it will rear its head again, usually more forcefully than at the start. That has been the case with the issue of social benefits, still too liberally handed out, which the mayor of the village Monok raised several weeks ago.

Local Roma leaders and a Roma MEPs said after a meeting last Tuesday that a recent "village festival" (falunap in Hungarian) was a racist provocation intended to intimidate the local gypsy community.

An international conference will be held on the Holocaust of the Roma starting on July 31, the Education Ministry announced on its web-page on Saturday. The four-day conference is scheduled to share experience in teaching the Roma Holocaust in different countries. (MTI)

THE village of Vizuresti lies 35km (22 miles) from Bucharest and on the wrong side of the tracks. For the first few miles the road from the highway is paved, passing through a prosperous district with solid houses and well-tended fields. But once it crosses the railway, leading only to the Roma settlement, the tarmac stops. The way to Vizuresti is 20 minutes of deep potholes and ruts. Life for its 2,500 people, four-fifths of them Roma, is just as tough. (economist.com)

Amnesty International's (AI) 2008 report on Hungary highlighted deficiencies in the criminal justice system, particularly in connection with women who suffer from domestic violence and rape.

An EU representative of Roma ethnicity elected in Hungary, Viktoria Mohacsi, from the liberal grouping in the European Parliament - who over the past few days had visited gypsy camps just outside of Rome and Naples - said that he had been "frightened and filled with horror" at the scene meeting his eyes: "random night roundups, assault in prisons, gratuitous arrests and a general persecutory climate unworthy of a country which considers itself democratic."

Today, in a letter addressed to the European Union and the European Parliament the European Roma and Travellers Forum expressed concern over the violent attack on the informal settlements in Italy in which hundreds of Roma have been forced to run off for fear of their life.

The OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) today expressed concern over the violent attacks on informal Roma settlements in Italy. The ODIHR called on the Italian authorities to ensure the protection of the Roma population and urged politicians and the media to refrain from anti-Roma rhetoric.

Would the Roma movement disappear after George Soros? Is there someone else who will continue his mission? Have Roma organizations across the region understood the point?

Despite funds for the improvement of the living conditions of the Roma (Gypsy) minority significantly growing over the past 17 years, the design and supervision processes were not sufficient for effective management of the government programs, a study by the State Audit Office (Állami Számvevoszék; ÁSz) has concluded. According to privatbankar.hu, the study points out that an objective evaluation on the situation of the Roma minority has not been published since 1993, due to effective data protection laws which forbid data to be collected on minorities. This means the changes in the situation of the Roma since the political system change cannot be clearly examined, so traditional tools of economic analysis cannot be used to measure the effectiveness of programs aimed at helping the Roma.

A leading activist denounces ghettos and the media-created ?exotic trash? images of Europe's biggest minority of eight million people, who celebrate their day on 8 April

Cohesion policy: Hübner welcomes Hungary's drive to reduce regional disparities Danuta Hübner, European Commissioner for Regional Policy, will today meet Hungarian Prime Minister Mr Ferenc Gyurcsány to discuss Cohesion Policy for 2007-2013.

Hungarian-born violin virtuoso Roby Lakatos can trace his musical heritage back to 18th-century Budapest, where his seventh-generation ancestor János Bihari anticipated today?s musical fusions through his fiery mix of Romany melodies and classical counterpoint. With his shock of back-combed hair, flowing stage attire, and rakishly waxed mustache, Lakatos also possesses the fashion sense of an earlier and more elegant time; it?s easy to imagine him in the company of Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms, whose respective 21 Hungarian Dances and Hungarian Rhapsody were directly inspired by tunes that Bihari made famous.

A memorial tablet dedicated to the Roma soldiers who died in defence of their homeland was inaugurated on the court of the Hungarian Institute and Museum of Military History in Budapest on Tuesday.

The human rights situation in Hungary is in order for the most part, but there are still a few problems, said the US State Department annual report on the world human rights situation in 2007, made public on Tuesday.

A recent incident in which members of the far-right Jobbik party's militant wing, the Magyar Garda, blocked reporters from entering the courtroom grossly violated right of free access, a legal expert told MTI on Thursday.

Freedom of the press is at risk when a defendant - in this case the far right Jobbik party's paramilitary Hungarian Guard - blocks courtroom entry to media representatives it disapproves of, said President of the Association of Hungarian Journalists Pal Eotvos in Budapest on Thursday.

The Budapest Municipal Court issued a statement on Thursday contradicting many media reporters including MTI's court reporter, saying it first seated the media in a court case involving the far right Jobbik party's paramilitary organization, the Hungarian Guard.

Procedures will be put in place to monitor the implementation of the European Union's Roma social inclusion policies in individual countries, the EU's representative for minority issues agreed with Hungarian politicians on Monday.

A reporter who works for the right-leaning all-news television channel Hir TV admitted to being behind a series of phone calls that offered to buy votes from Roma representatives, police told MTI on Saturday.

The offers of a TV reporter impersonating a Socialist campaign chief to buy referendum votes from Roma representatives and the latter's willingness to cooperate triggered heated reactions from both sides of Hungary's political arena on Sunday.

Finance Minister Janos Veres, Member of Parliament for an E Hungary district called for criminal charges against television staff claiming to be Veres's campaign chief, who bombarded Roma leaders with phone calls promising money for votes in a forthcoming referendum.

For the first time in his 33 years, Peter says, a homegrown Hungarian movement is articulating a vision for how Hungarians can preserve their culture and traditions.

The Hungarian parliament passed a law against hate speech. According to the new law passed Monday, the use of hate speech is punishable by up to two years in prison.

Much work still lies ahead to integrate Roma people into the police force, but recent trends are encouraging, a senior police official told an international conference on Monday.

More than a hundred residents of the village of Olaszliszka have asked Justice Minister Albert Takács to intervene because of the increasing amount of growing abuse they suffer from the Roma inhabitants, reports right-leaning news channel hirtv.hu.

A 100-year old Roma tradition is under threat after a local government in south-east Hungary forgot to include an annual party to mark the end of the wedding season in their list of festivals. (Reuters)

A show of contemporary Romany art just closed on Sunday here at the National Gallery, Hungary’s grandest museum. The exhibition was the latest nod to Europe’s most despised, and this country’s largest, minority. It came and went uneventfully, which itself was an event, considering the rise this autumn of the Hungarian Guard, a right-wing extremist group, which has made much news dressing up in paramilitary outfits recalling the Nazi era, ranting about “safeguarding national culture and traditions” and marching on a village against what it said was Romany crime there. Nobody is quite sure how extensive the group is or whether it is just good at grabbing headlines. (The New York Times)

With 10 million Roma people in the European Union and levels of employment and poverty disproportionately high among them, MEPs on Thursday voted on a European strategy to try and improve the lives of the Roma community. Often discrimination in jobs and schooling are just some of the problems that Roma people face in Europe. Ahead of the vote we spoke to Hungarian MEP's of Roma origin Lívia Járóka and Viktória Mohácsi about the strategy and the situation of the Roma in Europe today.

The European Parliament, during its plenary session in Brussels today , adopted a resolution inviting the EU to form a Strategy with respect to situation of the Roma. Viktoria MOHACSI (SZDSZ, Hungary) reminds us that the European Parliament has already adopted a whole series of resolutions on this matter.

Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany on Wednesday underlined his full commitment to the Roma minority's integration, saying he would like to see a country in which being Roma did not automatically mean being poor and neglected.