Hungarians up and down the country have remembered members of the Roma community who lost their lives ten years ago.
According to MTI, the victims, who were murdered in spate of racially-motivated attacks a decade earlier, were commemorated in Budapest on Saturday.
The commemoration took place on the tenth anniversary of the murder of Róbert Csorba and his five-year-old son in Tatárszentgyörgy, central Hungary. The two were shot fleeing their home which had been firebombed.
The organisers of the commemoration – Roma civil organizations, ethnic minority councils and activists – placed a memorial plaque to the victims in Budapest’s Pope John Paul II Square. Afterward, they walked by torchlight to central Deák Square to attend a service for the victims of the attacks in the Lutheran church there.
János Pál Csóka, head of the Budapest Roma Ethnic Minority Council, said it is important for Roma to stand up for their ethnic identity. The events of ten years ago were reminiscent of the Roma Holocaust “when our people were rounded up,” he said. This must never happen again, he added.
In 2016, the Kúria, Hungary’s supreme court, convicted four suspects for the murders. Three were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and one to a thirteen-year prison term.