Calvin Synod Herald, 1978 (78. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1978-07-01 / 7-8. szám
6 CALVIN SYNOD HERALD HUNGARIAN MINORITY MAKES ITSELF HEARD IN ROMANIA By Eric Bourne Staff correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor Vienna Europe’s most “silent” and largest minority west of Russia has suddenly become openly and loudly vocal about its national rights. More than 1.7 million Hungarians living in Romanian Transylvania are taking their cue from the Helsinki declaration, which has stimulated concern for human rights in many countries. The Hungarian minority — approximately 8 percent of the Romanian population — charge that their rights are increasingly flouted. They complain bitterly of a steady “Romanization” in education and culture. From the early 11th century until 1918 Romanian Transylvania was part of Hungary. When the Hapsburg Empire collapsed, it went to Romania. Hungary briefly regained it in 1940 but lost it again when the Western-Soviet alliance awarded it back to Romania for switching sides near the end of the war. Despite last summer’s agreement by Hungarian and Romanian party leaders on improving cultural and travel facilities for Romanian Hungarians, conditions remain largely unchanged, according to many who spoke with two Western observers in Transylvania earlier last month. Discontent among Transylvania’s Hungarians has been growing steadily since the 1950s because of priorities accorded the Romanian population and its language. But protest was muted under Romania’s generally authoritarian internal system and its rigid attitudes toward ethnic groups. In recent months, however, four of the community’s best-known representatives have confronted the Romanian party and government with detailed criticisms and evidence of abuses of constitutional minority guarantees. First was former Hungarian member of Romania’s State Council, Károly Király, who sent an open letter to President Nicolae Ceausescu in January. At the outset, several past and present members of the party leadership supported him. Some, however, withdrew when his protest was published in the West. Mr. Király, himself, was later exiled to a town outside the Hungarian area. Subsequently, Mr. Ceausescu made a speech betraying evident uneasiness about minority unrest. He denounced “weak elements ... who sell their services to foreign circles” and reiterated old claims that Romania’s minorities enjoyed the same citizen rights as Romanians. Last week, however, three more protests became known. Their authors were: 8 Hungarian-born Deputy Premier János Fazekas, who listed minority grievances in a letter to the party. 8 Transylvania writer and candidate member of the party committee András Sütő, who protested restrictions on Hungarian-language education. 8 Lajos Takács, a former rector of the Cluj (Transylvania) University which had separate Romanian and Hungarian faculties until the mid-1950s, when all were merged under mainly Romanian direction. In a 7,000-word memorandum to the party committee (of which he too is a candidate member). Mr. Takács extolled the party’s efforts to build national unity but went on to itemize 18 areas in which, he said, laws on minority rights were not being observed. He called for a full-scale party review of all nationality questions. The Christian Science Monitor, May 2,1978 * “Hungarians are increasingly complaining against forcible Romanization and discrimination in every sphere of life. The ethnic Hungarians have been living in Transylvania for over a thousand years. But since the demise of the Austro-Hungarian empire at the end of the First World War, the region has changed hands three times. The Hungarians who hitherto had their old cultural institutions have gradually been losing them as the policy of enforced assimilation by the Romanian state gained momentum over the past 10 years or so. Although couched in moderate terms (Mr. Takács’s memorandum), it nevertheless makes the point clear that that the Hungarians have been loosing ground for a number of years; their cultural institutions are being gradually abolished and they are being dispersed from the regions where they lived in compact communities.” The (London) Times, April 25,1978 $ THE BRONZE GODDESS Liberty is more than an ever-burning torch held mightily aloft by a heroic statue overlooking New York harbor. It is a weight of responsibility each American must bear forever aloft for every other person. Only when freedom is so conceived and so borne, with pride and with the dignity of social conscience, does it lend significance to the bronze goddess gracing the gateway to our world. Eugene Gay-Tifft
