Hungarian American Coalition News, 1999 (8. évfolyam, 1-3. szám)
1999 / 3. szám
While this NATO campaign has been justified by the need to defend the human rights of the Kosovo Albanians, the justification should also include that all people have a right to self-determination and self-defense if threatened by "ethnic cleansing," "colonization," abuse and harassment, and discrimination that limits or destroys their right or ability to preserve their cultural and historical identity. This is particularly true for the Hungarians in Vojvodina since they were transferred at the end of 1918 to a Greater Serbia (i.e., Yugoslavia) in direct violation of the democratic principle of self-determination. (No referendum or plebiscite was held!). It should become a generally accepted principle that a state abdicates its right to govern the territorial settlements of its minority peoples if it threatens these peoples with extinction as a religious community, culture, linguistic group, or ethnic collectivity. Yugoslavia's defeat provides the opportunity to re-establish the self-governing institutions that existed before Milosevic abolished the autonomous existence of Vojvodina and Kosovo. However, they now need to be re-established in a different way, taking into account the political and demographic changes that have taken place during the past 10-11 years. At a minimum the Hungarian American Coalition calls for an acceptance of the autonomy aspirations of the Hungarians in the Vojvodina (see attached "Three-way autonomy: A blueprint for the nationalities of Vojvodina"). It is no longer enough to grant autonomy to Vojvodina as a whole. During the past eleven years the region's demographic profile has been completely transformed, making the Serbs - through an aggressive colonization process - the overwhelming majority (64.3%) of the entire province. The autonomy concept must be revised to also apply separately to the northern one-fourth of the province. Autonomy, local self-government must be granted to this sub-region. We call your attention to this solution because Serb-controlled Yugoslavia has a legacy of unmitigated oppressive policies against its Hungarian inhabitants - as against the Albanians. The peace concluding hostilities in the present war will provide an opportunity to keep the Serbs from continuing their abuse and will prevent them from attacking the Hungarians next and from spreading instability and conflict. It is therefore in NATO's and Hungary's long-term interests — the one front-line NATO state in the region — that the sacrifices of the victims of Yugoslav aggression and the efforts of NATO not be in vain. It is in the national interest of the US to apply preventive medicine so that it can forestall having to intervene militarily a third time. To protect the region against the continued expansion of the policies of ethnic cleansing, the region north of the Veliki canal (Nagy canal, formerly Ferenc canal) linking the Danube and Tisza (Tisa) rivers and the trans-Tisza region north of the Zlatica (Aranka) river should be given autonomy within Vojvodina. The borders of this region would include the area from Bezdan (Bezdán) on the Danube in the west to Becej (Óbecse) on the Tisza in the east (See map 1). This region is the most densely populated Hungarian inhabited part of the Vojvodina and includes most of the 350,000 Hungarians of present-day Yugoslavia. The Hungarian population constitutes a clear plurality in this region. The Bunjevci (Bunyevac), Serb and Croat populations of this northern region are all minorities. In the case of the Serbs in this region, most were brought in during the present century as colonists (dobrovoltsi) following World War I, as colonists taking over Swabian German settlements following World War II, and as Krajina “refugee colonists” following the Dayton accord of 1995. The major settlements in this region include Subotica (Szabadka), Sombor (Zombor), Bajmok, Becej (Óbecse), Senta (Zenta), Backa Topola (Bácskatopolya), Srbobran (Szenttamás), Coka (Csóka), and Novi Knezevac (Törökkanizsa). Within this region as well as throughout Yugoslavia, the Yugoslavian government must guarantee the security, human rights and citizenship rights of all inhabitants, including the non-Serb peoples in Vojvodina. It must desist from policies of Serbianization, including the settlement of more Serb refugees in Hungarian or other minority inhabited regions. It must keep Serb paramilitary units out of these areas and punish all those, like Seselj and Arkan, who incite ethnic hatred, spread fear and intolerance, and engage in any other activities that threaten these historic minority communities. Finally, in the event that Yugoslavia continues to deny internationally recognized obligations regarding the rights of its minorities - including personal, cultural and local autonomy for Hungarians - then the northern one-fourth of Vojvodina should be detached from Serbia as a preventive territorial adjustment. The latter should be legalized through an internationally supervised plebiscite, which would determine the wishes of the inhabitants of the region. 2 • Hungarian American Coalition News • Special VOJVODINA ISSUE • October 1999
