GYPSY A VAGABOND HUMAN-RIGHTS ACTIVIST

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, February 27, 1992                   TAG: 9202270184
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG HIGHER EDUCATION WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium
GYPSY A VAGABOND HUMAN-RIGHTS ACTIVIST
In Europe, many Gypsies have stopped migrating.
But Menyhert Lakatos is wandering from place to place this month, studying civil rights. An author and activist for Gypsy rights in his native Hungary, he is trying to help his country's new government cope with minorities and ensure his people's welfare and human rights.
Lakatos was at Virginia Tech this week, talking with people at the Equal Opportunity Office, at the NAACP and at New River Community Action, studying a program that helps the less fortunate.
On his 30-day tour of America, he will address various groups of Hungarians in his native language or in Rom, the language of the Gypsies. To most, though, he speaks through his interpreter, Eva Baer of Blacksburg.
"You have to know that Hungary is like a new state now after all of these years under communism," he said. "It is only two years since the government is democrat, and two years is very little time in the life of a democracy. There are many things we don't know yet."
In Hungary, the Gypsy community is the largest minority group, much like blacks are in America, he said. "We only know our rights, but the possibility to use these rights are very scarce. We have very little experience in how to use and exercise our rights."
His people have been kept down, he said, kept from learning.
Then, suddenly, when they were given the right to learn, people wanted to know a few years later why they were still illiterate. Lakatos is one of the few to have become educated.
About 80 percent of the Gypsies in Hungary are unemployed, compared with about 20 percent of other Hungarians.
Gypsies in the United States are not well off, either, he said. Many are poor and do not know how to organize.
"I think the situation in Hungary is the same as it is here for blacks and other minorities," he said, his gestures growing larger, quicker. "They are forced out of the mainstream culture. Some live in terrible poverty, as social outcasts."
In Hungary, he said, the majority seems to blame its problems on the minority. "They blame them for being uneducated or illiterate. But they didn't give these people the chance to study. They are blamed for not working, but they are not allowed to be skilled. They are only given the lowliest type of work."
A civil rights movement has begun in Europe, and Lakatos is in the midst of it.
"If we are going to make this work, we are talking about changing a mentality - the minds of the people, the souls of the people," Lakatos said. "That can only be achieved if both sides have a lot of patience. You need patience and good feelings.
"The only way the wall will be demolished is if both sides pick off the bricks."
Many people picture the Gypsies as a colorful people with bright clothes and earrings, perhaps with a wagon or two.
And in Hungary, much of that culture is still there.
"People still like to be colorfully dressed with big earrings," he said. "This is ancient tradition. It came with us from India centuries ago, and the inner culture is very important."
Folklore and music are important to his people, too, he said, along with dancing and telling stories.
"We are trying to preserve it," he said. "But that doesn't mean we cannot be a part of the universal human culture as well. We want to keep our own culture, but we want to be well-educated and have our civil rights."
His visit coincided with Black History Month, but that, he said, was a coincidence.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB