Our client, a woman who was reunited with her family and moved to Hungary, was called upon by the process-server of the local mayor’s office in the summer of 2004. He informed the woman that by the order of the mayor she would be doing communal work in the kitchen of the local kindergarten. She was really happy to hear the news because first of all she had been unemployed for several years by then, and second, she felt it a great honour to get into the kindergarten from the roma row. It was unprecedented in the town for a “gypsy woman” to work in the kitchen where food was cooked for other villages as well. As is later turned out, despite the mayor’s promise, our client could not break the previous practice.
The woman is a Slovak citizen of half roma, half Hungarian origin, whose mother tongue is Hungarian. After marrying a roma man in the village in question she moved to Hungary and moved in with her husband’s family in the roma quarter of the village. From this point on the completely fair-skinned woman was considered a roma in the village, but if she wanted to get a job, she was considered a foreigner. She tried to obtain Hungarian citizenship three times, but was always refused on grounds that her living in Hungary is not ensured. The Hungarian mother tongue, her Hungarian citizen husband and their Hungarian citizen child were not enough for her to obtain citizenship. Because she couldn’t receive citizenship, she couldn’t enter employment, thus she could do nothing to ensure the living of herself and her family. Her husband was also permanently unemployed. As a roma with no education in a small settlement in a crisis-stricken region, she doesn’t have a big chance to be permanently employed.
As we said, the family lives in the roma quarter of the village. The quarter mad up of typical “Cs”-houses is completely separated from the village. Whoever lives there is considered a gypsy, irrespective of the skin-colour.
The situation of the woman changed after Hungary joined the EU, when she could be employed in Hungary as a Slovak citizen. This is when a colleague of the mayor’s office saw her about employing her in the kitchen of the kindergarten. On order of the Office, our client underwent different medical examinations to obtain the necessary medical booklet, and on her own expense has also bought the white coat needed for work. She travelled on her own expense to the county seat to arrange care of medical and official matters.
In the meantime word spread quickly around the village that a roma woman will be working in the kitchen of the kindergarten. Several people stopped her in the street, in the shops and asked her if this was true. She took pride in the news as she felt it an honour that she, a roma, will be employed in the kitchen of a public institution. She later told as that in the past years romas only got work on the street, picking up litter, cleaning ditches, while in public offices and public institutions only non-romas were employed.
Her joy did not last for long. She had only just obtained the necessary certificates when she was told that she would have to start working on the street, because instead of helping out in the kindergarten she will be picking up litter. It turned out that after the word about who will be employed in the kitchen spread around the village several people went to the mayor and told him that “they refuse to take food from the hands of a gypsy woman”.
As the family was financially defenceless, they had to care for two minor children; our client accepted the work on the street. However the incident haunted her, she couldn’t get over it. She felt that she had been humiliated in front of the whole village. As the word that the woman was going to work in the kitchen spread in seconds, the fact that several people don’t want a “gypsy woman to touch” the food didn’t stay secret either. Following this everyone saw our client sweeping the street.
We have tried to settle the case out of court with the mayor before the lawsuit. We thought that if the head of the village were ready to employ the woman in the kitchen, we would disregard a legal procedure. However, the head of the village refused to enter into any sort of agreement. Naturally, he did not acknowledge discrimination. He claimed that he only made the woman go through the medical tests so that she is available in case she is needed to stand in for somebody. This contradicts with the fact that since the incident an extra hand or a replacement was needed in the kitchen of the kindergarten several time, but they never called the roma woman to fill in. Instead they always had non-romas do the work. In the end we initiated a legal lawsuit, as we believe that the village self-government responsible for the organisation of communal work has violated that requirement for equal treatment in the proceedings prior to labour relation. We asked the court to stipulate a 300 thousand HUF compensation for non-pecuniary damages.