Itt-Ott, 1980 (13. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)
1980 / 4. szám
FlElLEHSik TOK. A MAGYAR BARÁTI KÖZÖSSÉG LEVELE CARTER ELNÖKHÖZ Dear Mr. President: While stressing the concept of human rights as one of the bases of your foreign policy ina recent address, you made particular reference to Poles and Hungarians as people who understood the importance of this principle. We, the undersigned members of the Magyar Baráti Közösség (Hungarian Communion of Friends), gathered here for a week of fellowship, salute you for your statement. It is indeed true that we Hungarians have learned through bitter experience — as have our Polish brethren — that abandoning moral principles for the sake of political expediency cannot fail to have disastrous consequences for those involved and for mankind as a whole. We thank you for your notable efforts in promoting the cause of human rights the world over, and laud your political courage and personal integrity in persisting, even against an increasingly alarming popular opinion to the contrary, in elevating the foreign policy of the United States to a higher ethical plane. At the same time, Mr. President, we urge you to remember, during the current campaign and afterwards, that human rights apply not only to individuals, but also to minorities as groups and classes, whether national, linguistic or religious, and that denying people the right to live and prosper, collectively, as members of a minority, is just as reprehensible as discriminating against individuals because they are members of a given minority. And in this connection we should like to call your attention in particular to the plight of Europe's largest minority, the Hungarians living in areas formerly a part of Hungary, especially of those who now suffer second-class status in Romania, Czechoslovakia and in the Soviet Union. We should think it proper, Mr. President, if the Government of the United States, whose policies have been instrumental in creating and perpetuating their condition, were to show its concern and good will toward them whenever it deals with the respective governments in question. We should like to add, further, that the stationing of foreign troops, missiles and nuclear weapons on Hungarian soil, counter to the will of the Hungarian people, is in itself a gross violation of the human rights of every man, woman and child living in Hungary. Mr. President, it is an old American saying that actions speak louder than words. We trust that in the matter of human rights for Poles and Hungarians, too, actions, no matter how humble, will follow the words. Please accept our very best wishes for the future. Dated August 29, 1980 at Lake Hope, Ohio Nicholas Z. Erdy, Ph.D., D.D.S., West New York, NJ László Aranyos, Chicago, IL Klara K. Lutsky, B.A., Hackettstown, NJ Marton Sass, Architect, Chicago, IL MariaS. Koller, Rockaway, NJ Levente L. Koller, Rockaway, NJ 5
