Will life improve for Hungary's Roma community under Magyar?
Key takeaways
- Under Viktor Orban, the Roma community was kept at the very bottom of the social ladder.
- https://p.dw.com/p/5FDe UPeter Magyar (left) hugged Roma pop star Ibolya Olah after she performed on the parliament steps Image: Youtube/@magyarpeterofficial Advertisement.
- It brought tears to the eyes of many of the members of parliament as well as to the tens of thousands who gathered outside parliament.
Why this matters: an international story with cross-border implications worth tracking.
Under Viktor Orban, the Roma community was kept at the very bottom of the social ladder. His successor is taking a stand against antiziganism. But can Hungarian Roma expect fundamental changes?
https://p.dw.com/p/5FDe UPeter Magyar (left) hugged Roma pop star Ibolya Olah after she performed on the parliament steps Image: Youtube/@magyarpeterofficial Advertisement. It was one of the most emotional moments of the transfer of power in Hungary: On May 9, just as the new National Assembly convened for its inaugural session, a group of children in white shirts entered the plenary hall of the magnificent neo-Gothic parliament building in the Hungarian capital Budapest. They played tamburas and guitars, and sang "Cigany Himnusz," the unofficial anthem of the Roma in Hungary. The opening lines go "zold az erdo, zold a hegy is" or "green is the forest, green is the hill."
It brought tears to the eyes of many of the members of parliament as well as to the tens of thousands who gathered outside parliament. Aladar Horvath, one of Hungary's best-known Roma civil rights activists and one of the country's first Roma members of parliament after the end of the communist dictatorship in 1990, was also there. "I too was moved to tears," he said. "It was as if we were finally coming home."