Robert Csorba, 27, and his 4-year-old son, Robert, were killed as they tried to escape from their burning home in Tatarszentgyorgy.

By NICHOLAS KULISH


TISZALOK, Hungary - Jeno Koka was a doting grandfather and dedicated worker on his way to his night-shift job at a chemical plant recently when he was shot dead at his doorstep. To his killer, he was just a Gypsy, and that seems to have been reason enough.

Prejudice against Roma - widely known as Gypsies and long among Europe’s most oppressed minority groups - has swelled into a wave of violence. Over the past year, at least seven Roma have been killed in Hungary, and Roma leaders have counted some 30 Molotov cocktail attacks against Roma homes, often accompanied by sprays of gunfire.

But the police have focused their attention on three fatal attacks since November that they say are linked. The authorities say the attacks may have been carried out by police officers or military personnel, based on the stealth and accuracy with which the victims were killed.

In addition to the death of Mr.Koka, 54, there were the slayings of a Roma man and woman, who were shot after their house was set ablaze last November in Nagycsecs, a town about an hour’s drive from Tiszalok in northeastern Hungary. And in February, a Roma man and his 4-year-old son were gunned down as they tried to escape from their home, which was set on fire in Tatarszentgyorgy, a small town south of Budapest.

Jozsef Bencze, Hungary’s national police chief, said in an interview on April 24 with the daily newspaper Nepszabadsag that the perpetrators, believed to be a group of four or more men in their 40s, were killing “with hands that are too confident.”Military counterintelligence is taking part in the investigation, Hungarian radio reported, and Mr.Bencze said the pool of suspects included veterans of the Balkan wars and Hungarian members of the French Foreign Legion.

Experts on Roma issues describe an ever more aggressive atmosphere toward Roma in Hungary and elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe, led by extreme right-wing parties, whose leaders are playing on old stereotypes of Roma as petty criminals and drains on social welfare systems at a time of rising economic and political turmoil. As unemployment rises, officials and Roma experts fear the attacks will only intensify.

“One thing to remember, the Holocaust did not start at the gas chambers,”said Lajos Korozs, senior state secretary in the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor, who works on Roma issues for the government.

In the Czech Republic, where radical right-wing demonstrators have clashed with the police as they tried to march through Roma neighborhoods, a small child and her parents were severely burned after assailants firebombed their home in the town of Vitkov in April. The police in Slovakia were caught on video recently tormenting six Roma boys they had arrested, forcing them to undress, hit and kiss one another.

But nowhere has the violence reached the level it has in Hungary, spreading fear and intimidation through a Roma population of roughly 600,000.

Viktoria Mohacsi, a Roma member of the European Parliament, said the police - who still decline to explicitly name ethnicity as a motive in the cases - were slow to recognize the blossoming violence against the community.“At the beginning, they said it was illegal money lenders or that it was Roma killing each other,”Ms.Mohacsi said.

“In the past five years, attitudes toward Roma in many parts of Eastern Europe have hardened, and new extremists have started to use the Roma issue in a way that either they didn’t dare to or didn’t get an airing before,”said Michael Stewart, coordinator of the Europe-wide Roma Research Network.

The extreme-right party Jobbik has used the issue of what its leaders call “Gypsy crime” to rise in the polls to near the 5 percent threshold for seats in Hungary’s Parliament in next year’s election, which would be a first for the party. Opponents accuse the Hungarian Guard, the paramilitary group associated with the party, of staging marches and public meetings to stir up anti- Roma sentiment and to intimidate the Roma population.

“We are living in fear, all the Roma people are,”said Csaba Csorba, 48, whose son Robert, 27, and grandson, also named Robert, were killed by a blast from a shotgun shortly after midnight in the February attack. They were buried together in one coffin.

The child’s death shook Roma here.“It proved to us it doesn’t matter whether we are good people or bad people,”said Agnes Koka, 32, the niece and goddaughter of Mr.Koka, who relatives said loved to bring candy and fruit to his grandchildren.“It only matters that we are Gypsy,”Ms.Koka said.