Amerikai Magyar Hírlap, 1989 (1. évfolyam, 1-24. szám)
1989-04-21 / 7. szám
AMERICAN Hungarian Journal Miklós Duray on Tour in North America Miklós Duray, a member of Charter 77, the independent human rights monitoring organization in Czechoslovakia, who was jailed in 1982-83 (four months) and again in 1984-85 (twelve months) for his activities in defense of the rights of the one million-strong Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia, will visit more than three dozen cities in the U.S. and Canada as part of a fourmonth lecture tour sponsored by the New Yorkbased Hungarian Human Rights Foundation. Mr. Duray, who intends to return to his native city of Bratislava (Pozsony) after his current one-year stay, will lecture on the plight of the Hungarian minority, the struggle for human rights in Czechoslovakia and the role of the West in affecting future prospects for change in his native country. Mr. Duray, 43, a geologist by profession, was imprisoned for the second time on May 10, 1984 in Bratislava (Pozsony) for organizing an unprecedented, successful protest campaign in early 1984. Petitions signed by 10,000 citizens against passage of a bill threatening minority-A NEW NATIONAL FLAG has been hoisted on the ramparts of the Castle of Buda during the festivities of March 15. Apparently the newly designed flag is different from the official state flag in its details. Its size is three by six meters, and it is there to stay all year round. According to the news report, it symbolizes national sovereignity, freedom, and belonging together. NO MAY-DAY PARADE will be held this year in Hungary; only a few localities are planning to organize general assemblies. The popular comic paper Ludas Matyi has the following remarks to offer, in a humoristic vein: the cancellation of the parade is probably due to the fact that they ran out of slogans, the old signs are worn out and the new ones have not been prepared yet because of the scarcity of paint, and other matters of principle. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS was quoting the statement of Sándor Csoóri that only a multiparty system can lead Hungary out of its present crisis. The London Daily Telegraph quotes from a statement made by Mátyás Szűrös, the new president of the Parliament, in Vienna, to the effect that the Soviet Union prefers to see neutral but stable Socialist countries on its borders, rather than shaky allies. THE PRESS CONFERENCE held recently at the Budapest headquarters of the Communist Party (MSzMP) Central Committee was attended, among others, by László Kasza, language schooling for the Hungarian minority in Slovakia resulted in defeat of the bill, but also led to his arrest. Throughout his twelve-month captivity, Mr. Duray was held in virtual isolation. His wife was allowed to visit him a total of three times, on each occasion for five minutes only, and their conversation had to be conducted in Slovak in the presence of the prosecutor. He was also denied medication needed for chronic liver and gall bladder ailments. He was released from prison on May 10, 1985, exactly one year after his arrest, under the terms of a limited amnesty. Adopted during both his incarcerations as a Prisoner of Conscience by Amnesty International, Mr. Duray’s release came as a result of wide-ranging international attention, including protests by numerous members of Congress, the P.E.N. Freedom to Write Committee, the U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee, the International Human Rights Law Group, and a wide variety of professional and human rights monitoring organizations in the United States and Europe. reporter of Radio Free Europe, who was allowed to ask questions just like anybody else. Reportedly this was the first time such a thing happened, but it can be regarded as a precedent for the future. Kasza said later, when asked about his impressions, that everyone treated him with the utmost courtesy and fellowship. SOCIOLOGIST OTTILIA SOLT’s name was, for many years, found in Hungary only in tight-lipped police reports issued after national anniversaries. Abroad, she was only known in circles of those who think differently, the organizers of commemorations, and the courageous and active supporters of the so-called "szamizdat" or underground literature back home. Lately they have discovered Ottilia Solt, and now she is "in". Hungarian newspapers carry interviews with her, and she even had a televised appearance recently. Answering questions, se admitted that she had a choice of several job offers. THE RUSSIANS ARE PACKING - reports a recent issue of the paper Mai Nap. The author of the article, Eva F. Kovats, relates that part of the Soviet armed forces stationed at Tolna have started preparations for the pull-out. Two out of three troops are packing up. "If that’s the decision, that’s how it’s got to be, we’ll pack up and go," was the wry remark, according to the reporter, of Lt. Colonel Leonid Leontievich Litovchenko, bataillon chief of the Tolna troops of the Southern Army Group. A magyarországi eseményekről tudósító cikkeket ezen az oldalon JANCSÓ ZSUZSA fordította angolra FIDESZ (Federation of Young Democrats) proposes the exclusion of party members from certain job specifications. To be more exact, they formulated the principle that in the future, members of the judiciary apparatus and the armed forces will have to be removed from party struggles. Beginning immediately, the criteria for the selection of constitutional judges should include that the judge cannot be a member of any political party. Dr. OTTO von HABSBURG has given an interview to the Budapest newspaper Reform. To the question of the reporter, when he had ceased to be a legitimist, Otto von Habsburg answered: "Even now I am a legitimist, since I consider, for example, the Republic of Switzerland legitimate. I believe in legitimity, whether it is Monarchist or Republican." With this, the foreign visitor gave a lesson in semantics to the reporter who had thought that the term only referred to Monarchists, while in fact it can also mean lawfulness, legitimity or legal continuity. THE NEW MARCH FRONT proposed the establishment of a Countrywide National Committee in conjunction with the Parliament. Its membership would consist of delegates of MSzMP as well as the independent organizations, working together as equals. This forum would assure a gradual and non-explosive transition to representative democracy based on free elections. THE BARRAGE OF BOSNAGYMAROS has been the subject of a public opinion survey after its ratification by the Parliament. The National Public Opinion Research Institute asked questions in several parts of the country. 66 percent of the inhabitants of the capital, 47 percent of small town residents, and 56 percent of villagers said that the decision had decreased the prestige of the Parliament. 60 percent of Budapesters, 52 percent of small towners, and 61 percent of villagers felt that the confidence in the leaders of the country had suffered as a result. THE PARTY STATE HAS COME TO A DEAD END - observed Miklós Németh, Communist Prime Minister in the Hungarian Parliament, in the course of a debate regarding the regulating principles of the Constitution. He said that the change of model for Socialism was unavoidable, and he added: "We have to effect the social supervision of the exercise of power!" News In Brief From Hungary The choice offered by newspaper stands is getting more colorful every day, new items appear all the time; however, most of them are entertainment or hobby magazines, or sensationalist/gossip papers, while cultural reviews are dying in slow agony. In editorial circles there is more and more talk about discontinuations, mergers, and cutting down on issues - presumably with good reason. A dangerous process seems to be under way: the forcing out of high quality cultural press "in a social situation to which the only solution would be a cultural reform." This remark is from a report - equivalent of a cry of distress - put together by the Journalist Federation’s cultural section, urging all parties interested in saving the publications in question to immediate action. In the new press system, free of price control, the lack of a fast response can mean final disaster for cultural magazines. (Magyar Hírlap) BUDAPEST (Continued) Between Buda and Pest, in the middle of the winding Danube, Margaret Island with its ancient ruins, modern swimmming pools, sports grounds and entertainments gleams like a great emerald gem. And the bridges spanning the big river link Buda and Pest with their steel and ferro-concrete arms to form Budapest. "A youthful maiden on the banks of the old Danube" - is the name she was given by one of her admirers. And truly, Budapest in her present form as a metropolis is young: the Chain Bridge, the first permanent Danube bridge which formed a firm link between Buda and Pest, is only a little over hundred years old. The rows of houses on the city’s finest avenue, the present-day People’s Republic Avenue, were built in the eighties of the last century, and it was about that time that the blocks of flats lining the Great Boulevard emerged in place of a drained and filled-in branch of the Danube. Seventy years ago, the "hundred-towered" Parliament House was not yet standing on the Danube embankment, and the tavern, which used to be a favorite of Danube boatmen waiting for work, was pulled down only eighty years ago to make way for the brilliant Opera House. The present-day City Park, by the entrance of which the Museum of Fine Arts and the Art Gallery stand, where in one of the most elegant restaurants of the capital, the Gundel, soft gipsy music sounds, where around the Amusement Park and the Zoo the people of the capital swarm in search of entertainment, a noted journalist of those times found only "barren areas". Horse-drawn tram cars were still used as a means of transport along the wide streets by those who were in a hurry, when, in 18%, on the onethousandth anniversary of the settlement of the Magyars in Hungary, the underground electric railway of Pest began to run. In the place of the residential district of today, excellent wines were grown, and in the year of the Millennium members of the smart set of Pest went there on horseback for the vintage. Although even in those days Budapest could not be called a small town: the population numbered about 200,000. One hundred years is a relatively short time in the life of a city. However, even if many people like to compare Budapest to the fair sex, it is still not proper to rejuvenate her so much. Actually, there were settlements here, in the Danube region, as far back az 6,000 years according to relics the archeologits have excavated. In the days of the Romans, when the Danube was called Iser, the Second Legio adiutrix was stationed on the site of present-day Óbuda; many of their relics have remained in the former Roman town of Aquincum, excavated in the northwestern part of Budapest. Recently, stones with ancient inscriptions and Roman golden jewellery were found during the construction of the assembly shop of the Óbuda Shipyard, where the archeologist’s spade unearthed the remains of a villa decorated with mosaics - the master of the villa called Hadrian, who later became the emperor of the Roman Empire. Rome declined, and new peoples settled here: King Attila’s Hun warriors, then Avars and Slavs lived on this spot, until at the end of the ninth century the Magyars settled on the banks of the Danube. However, the urban development of Buda, as understood in the medieval sense, only began in the thirteenth century, after the destructive Tartar invasion, when King Bela IV had a castle built on the present Castle Hill. Sigismund of Luxembourg, the Holy Roman emperor and Hungarian king who had John Huss burnt at the stake, and King Matthias Corvinus, the great ruler and patron of art and science, who had a greater income than his ruling contemporary in England, spent considerable sums on the development and decoration of the Buda Castle. Then came the era of the Turkish occupation: for a century and a half minarets and golden half-moons were reflected in the waters of the blue Danube: today only a few graves and the famed Turkish baths recall their memory. "A city of spas" - this, too, is one of the epithets of Budapest. If its propaganda were as good as the healing powers of the thermal waters of Buda, "Budapest the City of Spas" would be even more famous. The waters of the Császár, Lukács and Gellért baths have a miracolous effect on gout and rheumatism, and those who are healthy may swim to their hearts’ content in the swimming pools, on the lidos by the Danube and in the river. Budapest might also be called the indestructible city. (Continued) A Cry of Distress amerikai mm HjlUBISfl Magyar Iftrlap (Q
