10 January 2008
The Prosecutor’s Office in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, has asked a city court to disband the extreme-right paramilitary ‘Magyar Garda’ [Hungarian Guard] group, which was set up in August 2007 by the Jobbik Party. The guard, which currently has around six hundred members, marchs in uniforms emblazoned with the red-and-white Arpad stripes, a version of which was used by Hungary’s wartime Arrow Cross Nazi leadership. Hungarian Jewish leaders and the World Jewish Congress have repeatedly called for the Hungarian Guard to be banned.
Justice minister Albert Takacs told parliament that legal channels existed to take measures against the group. Takacs recently met European Union ambassadors who expressed their frustration at the government’s lack of action against the Magyar Garda. The prosecutor’s move follows a march by 300 guard members in December in the village of Tatarszentgyorgy, south of Budapest, against “Roma delinquency”. Speakers at the rally demanded systematic segregation between Roma and non-Roma, the scrapping of all affirmative action programs, the immediate halt of welfare payments until Roma recipients had completed public works, and the end of all government measures aimed at integrating Roma.
The Prosecutor’s Office said that the guard was guilty of racial discrimination, violating human dignity and causing fear among Hungary’s Roma population. Attila Morvai, the prosecutor’s spokesman, said: “Freedom of association cannot get in the way of another’s rights or freedom.”