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| - Hungary's top court Tuesday ordered that financial compensation must be paid to Roma victims of school segregation, snubbing Prime Minister Viktor Orban who has denounced the awards as "unfair". The Supreme Court ruling upheld an appeal court decision last year that the families of some 60 Roma children in the eastern town of Gyongyospata must be financially compensated for being taught separately from other children at a primary school. Orban argued that the compensation should comprise catch-up education and training instead. "In the case of compensation for non-monetary damages, the only way to award compensation is by monetary means," said a statement by the Supreme Court. "There is no legal possibility to apply compensation in kind," it said. Segregation of pupils on ethnic grounds is illegal in Hungary but the practice is widespread, particularly in areas with large populations of Roma, Hungary's largest ethnic minority at around seven percent of the 9.7-million population. In January, Orban placed the long-running case at the forefront of a government communication campaign against financial compensation by courts, and pledged to review the awards system. The nationalist premier said that ordinary Hungarians were angered by such rulings, and that it was "deeply unfair" that Roma families would get money "without working for it." Rights groups and Roma representatives said that Orban's remarks risked stoking prejudice against Roma, and showed disregard for rule-of-law norms and judicial independence. The precedent-setting case was brought against the school, the local municipality and educational authority, by the Chance for Children Foundation NGO, which represented the children's families. A court in Debrecen determined last September that between 2004 and 2017 the children suffered discrimination by being kept apart from non-Roma classmates at the school. As well as receiving inferior education for half that period in a separate part of the school, witnesses also said the children were stopped from joining swimming lessons, computer classes, or school outings. Often blamed for petty crime, the Roma minority faces widespread poverty and exclusion from mainstream society, and sometimes racially-motivated violence. The court's ruling means that some 99 million forints (280,000 euros, $305,000) must be paid to the victims, depending on how long they spent in the school. The local MP Laszlo Horvath, a member of Orban's ruling right-wing Fidesz party, called the decision "bad and unfair" as it "punishes the whole locality for the perceived or real grievances of a minority," and "disturbs the social peace". The government had planned a nationwide survey of citizens' opinions on the issue but postponed the campaign in March after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Government critics said the survey could have paved the way for Orban to curtail the independence of courts and further fuel prejudice against the Roma. pmu/wai
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