Court convicts Roma gang of racist crime; hands down 29 year sentences

[The Ripper]

By Hungary Around the Clock

Pest Central District Court on Thursday handed down a total of 29 years in prison to all seven members of a gang, mostly Roma youths, after finding that they had beaten a man because he was Hungarian.

The court stated that the perpetrators had acted out of racist motives.

The incident occurred on Tavaszmez utca in the Eighth District in 2009.

http://www.politics.hu/20110304/court-convicts-roma-gang-of-racist-crime-hands-down-29-year-sentences

In Sweden for example this would be unthinkable as Swedes are the one group not protected by "hate crime" -legislation.

[Moustache]

An article from index.hu (http://index.hu/belfold/2011/03/17/csak_ciganyok_tamadnak_rasszista_okbol/) attempts to paint a bigger picture, drawing on incidents like the attack in Tavaszmező st. to examine the practical application of laws originally intended to protect minorities, in an overall ambience of political strife.

The main points:

- an amendment made to the law dealing with hate crimes in 2009 now extends to violence committed against "certain groups of society", read: any group, on top of the previous, derivative definition of what constitutes a hate crime (violence against a national, ethnic, racial, religious group)

- a total of 36 registered crimes with 18 convictions on grounds of racial motives in the period between 2005 and 2009, tendency rising

- a selection of cases where crimes with seemingly unambiguously racial motives resulted in convictions for assault or breach of peace instead

- lack of a definition as to what constitutes "violence against a member of a group" results in a grey area in practice; role of a xenophobic tattoo or verbal utterances made during the act etc.

- intriguing fact: according to the law, belonging to a particular group does not exempt a person from committing hate crimes against one's own group; several members of the gang in the Tavaszmező st. incident referenced by Riippumatto's article and others in a separate case in Miskolc were Magyars.