PRAGUE: Street battles between far-right protesters and police in a Czech town and the killings of two Roma in Hungary point to old animosities that may worsen as the financial crisis takes hold.

Such violence is rising in parts of central and eastern Europe, disappointing leaders who had hoped the prosperity tied to European Union entry for some countries and economic growth in non-members could help mend nationalist and ethnic divisions.

Rights activists say although the right wing remains on the fringe of politics and racism does not appear to be rising across society as a whole, small pockets of far-right supporters have become bolder and better organised.

Racist violence is not exclusive to Europe’s eastern wing – Italian locals set fire to two Roma camps in Naples earlier this year – but many governments in the region are struggling to contain increasingly aggressive outbursts, particularly against the large, marginalised Roma minority.

“It’s clear that there’s an uptick in violent attacks at this stage. There does seem to be more activity in extremist groups and neo-nazi groups,” said Robert Kushen, managing director of the European Roma Rights Centre, a rights group.

Experts say a big threat is that far-right ideas could gain a foothold in the mainstream and lead to political inroads. Some cite gains by Austria’s far right in a September election, less than a year before a European Parliament election in June 2009.The tightening squeeze of the financial crisis could also exacerbate strife in areas left behind in the economic boom that has swept across much of central and eastern Europe this decade.

“It is tied to... economic worsening not only in the Czech Republic, but also in the rest of Europe, because all kinds of attacks have happened in a number of other countries,” Czech Prime Minister Miroslav Topolanek said this week. “There is unrest in society.”

‘Roma crime’

Earlier this month, assailants firebombed two homes and shot dead two Hungarian Roma. This week, a Roma couple was killed by a grenade blast. A public dispute followed over whether police had been too quick to rule out racism as a motive.

On Monday in the Czech Republic, 500 black-masked people shouting racist slogans tried to attack a Roma ghetto in Litvinov, a town in the country’s northern rust belt where unemployment, at 12 per cent, is double the national average.

Backed by the nationalist Czech Workers Party and supported by members of the town’s dominant white community, the crowd threw cobblestones and petrol bombs at police, who fought back with teargas and mounted officers. Fourteen people were injured.

John Dalhuisen, a researcher at rights group Amnesty International, said extremism was rising in areas passed over by the economic boom that has transformed the region’s once soot-caked capitals into vibrant European cities.

“Particularly (it is) in the rural provincial areas ... in the third or fourth category towns that haven’t seen the economic growth that the capital cities have seen and that the rest of the world is impressed by,” he said.

“People say the Czech Workers’ Party is racist, but they aren’t. They’re just trying to help other people who are afraid,” Anna Frankova, a Workers Party member, told Czech TV after the Litvinov riot.

According to think tank Political Capital, similar sentiment has boosted the potential social base for the far right.

This trend is also evident in anti-gay protests in the Baltics, attacks against immigrants in Ukraine and Russia, and more aggressive manifestations of anti-Semitic and anti-Roma feelings across the region in general.