Brown shirted Jobbik militia-men
Hungarian police in riot gear broke up a recruitment meeting for Jobbik’s outlawed neo-fascist militia, the Hungarian Guard.
Some 50 uniformed militiamen were on hand last Friday at a beer hall at Csepel, a poor industrial suburb of the Hungarian capital, when some 200 police arrived to break up the meeting to launch a national recruitment campaign.
The commander of the Guard called for reinforcements, and some 400 guardsmen were rushed to the scene, but diplomatic bargaining ended the confrontation. Police made three arrests.
A landmark court ruling earlier this year banned the paramilitary Guard, the private army of the extreme nationalist Jobbik Party. The Guard displays the colors and marches to the tunes of the defunct Arrow Cross, a Hungarian movement that murdered thousands of Jews, Gypsies and political dissidents during the Holocaust. The ruling also banned the uniform.
Csepel council members are organizing an all-party motion to reinforce an earlier local government decision declaring the Guard “unwelcome” in the district. This follows a brawl last week at Sajobabony in the impoverished northeast of Hungary where hundreds of Guardsmen and their supporters clashed with Gypsy residents outraged by racist attitudes expressed at a Jobbik public meeting.
Hungary’s Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai said: “Those who try to run an organisation banned by the court and march in its uniform, those who refuse to obey police orders and repeatedly provoke others, and those who go against the constitution of the Republic of Hungary must expect apt retribution”.
Last month Jobbik and the BNP entered into a new formal political alliance in the European Parliament.
