Calvin Synod Herald, 1983 (83. évfolyam, 2-4. szám)
1983-04-01 / 2. szám
CALVIN SYNOD HERALD — 7 — REFORMÁTUSOK LAPJA GENOCIDE AND ETHNOCIDE IN RUMANIA Excerpts from the publication of the International Conference of the Holocaust and Genocide, Tel Aviv, Israel, 1982. Rumania leads a well planned and systematically executed campaign to eliminate the national minorities through forceful assimilation into the Rumanian nationality. Guarantees of minority rights are not observed. The Rumanian government refuses to allow the minorities selfdetermination, autonomy or any kind of independent decision making. Hungarian schools are eliminated, all Hungarian Universities were merged into their Rumanian counterparts. By controlling the housing and labor market, the government breaks up homogeneous Hungarian communities and districts. Rumanians from old-Rumania are settled in great numbers into purely Hungarian areas to work in the newly constructed factories (built with American money) while the native Hungarians of the area are forced to move into old-Rumania in order to find work and housing. The Rumanian state exercises a policy of total interference in ecclesiastical matters, regardless of their nature. Protestant congregations are denied the traditional right to elect their own ministers and presbyters, in spite of the fact that it was in Transylvania where freedom of religion was written into the law for the first time in the history of Europe, in 1568. Freedom to publish theological books, periodicals and other religious material is extremely limited. The propaganda booklet, “The Hungarian Nationality in Rumania”, distributed recently by the “Rumanian Library” in New York, an arm of the Rumanian Communist government, was able to list only five theological books published in the Hungarian language in the last 25 years, compared to 83 published between 1934 and 1944. For the 800,000 members of the Hungarian Reformed (Calvinist) Church in Rumania only one bimonthly publication is allowed to be circulated in a mere 1000 (one thousand) copies. The Hungarian Protestant Theological Institute of Cluj (Kolozsvár) was hammered together in 1949 as a result of forced univication of the Presbyterian and Unitarian Theological Institutes, both established independently more than two centuries ago. Through this forced unification both the Presbyterian and the Unitarian Theological Institutes were deprived of their ancient tradition of self-determination and selfadministration, which included the education and training of their own ministers. The curriculum of the Protestant Theological Institute is now carefully designed and supervised by an inspector of the Ministry of Cults. Exams are chaired by the same inspector in order to insure that future clergymen of the Hungarian minority keep in line with the policy of the State. The Church is today the only remaining institution which could fulfill the minorities’ needs and allow them to nurture their ethnic heritage. In this sense, therefore, the harassment of the churches assumes a far greater meaning for minorities than simple the curtailment of their religious freedom. The forced isolation also harms minority churches which have sister-communities in the West and which are dependent to a great extent on donations from abroad to support their charitable work. Aside from limitations on their travel, clergymen are forbidden to receive gifts from abroad and to correspond with relatives, friends or institutions in noncommunist countries. The radical enforcement of these limitations is well documented in the available statistical data: between 1972 and 1982, in a period of ten years, 79 Hungarian clergymen were arrested, tortured, beaten to death or forced to commit suicide for overstepping the lines, drawn around them by the government. ANOTHER HUNGARIAN CLERGYMAN MURDERED As it was previously reported by the “Nouvel Observateur” in Paris, Rev. Iván Hadházy, age 36, Presbyterian minister in Beszterce, Transylvania was victim of an accident on Jan. 9, 1983. He was ran over by a truck owned and operated by the SECURITATE, the Rumanian political police. Further investigation revealed, that Reverend Hadhazy was often harassed by the SECURITATE in 1982 for having frequent visitors from Hungary and the United States, and corresponding with Hungarian writers and poets. Between Christmas and New Year Iván Hadhazy entertained in his home a visiting clergyman from Hungary. Apparently this was the cause of his execution. Reverend Hadházy is the ninth victim of similar “accidents” in the past three years. THE TRANSYLVANIAN QUARTERLY
