Hungarian Romanies protest at container homes plan

Romanies in the central Hungarian town of Szekesfehervar held a protest on Sunday against local authority plans to evict them from their current residences and move them into container homes, Hungarian radio reported.

"Should Szekesfehervar create a precedent, construction of masses of container ghettos can be expected in Hungary," the radio quoted a statement by a local "anti-ghetto committee" as saying.

"We cannot let anyone be evicted from his home, from the society of his town and country, eight years after the democratic change of system.

We must demand equal rights for our brothers in the most difficult situation, deprived of their jobs and human dignity," the radio quoted the statement as saying.

It also quoted a local press report saying that the town's "organisation of free gypsies" had rejected the protest and called on Romanies not to attend it, so as not to risk creating "adverse feeling in the town towards the minority."

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.