The Eighth Tribe, 1980 (7. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1980-10-01 / 10. szám

ETHNIC OPPRESSION IN ROMANIA

by the

HON. RICHARD T. SCHULZE OF PENNSYLVANIA IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Thursday, June 5, 1980

Mr. Speaker, within a week, the House of Representatives will again take up the issue of continued most-favored-nation trade status benefits for Romania.

Last year, 125 of my colleagues joined me in voting to terminate that status, because of the dismal human rights record of Romania, which is one of the most deplorable even among Communist states.

One facet of that record is the Romanian regime’s brutal treatment of its minorities, among them 2.5 million Hungarians, who are subjected to a relentless campaign of discrimination, cultural deprivation, and forced assimilation. This campaign resulted in one of the most courageous acts of dissent of our time, the protest letters of Mr. Károly Király, former alternate member of the Romanian party Politburo. Mr. Király has sacrificed his high position, risked the well-being of his family and his own life by expressing his conscience and speaking out against the oppression of his fellow Hungarians. As a result of his letters he has been exiled, subjected to the most vicious charges, and has lived under constant police surveillance and harassment ever since.

Last January, I visited Romania and intended to meet Mr. Király to get his opinion firsthand. However, the Romanian authorities denied me the opportunity to meet him on the most filmsy pretexts. His voice of protest, however, could not be silenced. Last February, he sent another extraordinary protest letter to Romania’s Prime Minister, Ilie Verdet. The letter reveals the promises he received from the Romanian leadership in an obvious attempt to silence him after his first letters of 1977. All of those promises have been broken, and the campaign of cultural genocide continues unabated. I submit to you Mr. Király’s letter as further evidence of the oppressiveness of the Ceausescu regime.

Before we discuss Romania’s trade status once again, I urge my colleagues to pay close attention to the words of this courageous individual. We must not turn a deaf ear to those in the Communist world, who are natural allies in our fight for the betterment of the human condition.

At this point, I enter into the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD the letter of Károly Király—a great champion of human rights.

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COMRADE ILIE VERDET,

Prime Minister of the Socialist Republic of Rumania.

Two years have passed since our last conversation at your office in the company of Petre Lupu, Teodor Coman and Janos Vinte. Since that time, numerous events have transpired in the life of our country. The 12tth Congress of the Rumanian Communist Party and the 2nd Congress of the Democratic Front of the Socialist Union have been held. Our conversation on October 4, 1977 was particularly significant. At your urgent request, I submitted a memorandum (of which you kept two copies) which summarized several key discussions and confrontations.

In essence, we agreed that I would drop the idea of forming a new organization for the co-inhabiting nationalities, whose function would have been to defend their constitutional rights. I made this concession on the condition that —and I quote from the above mentioned memorandum:

“. . . all necessary steps are taken to guarantee the rights provided for in the Constitution and other laws, including the practical implementation of these rights in all areas—education, cultural activity and use of the native tongue in all organizations and official bodies without discrimination of any kind—provided that disciplinary action is taken against those individuals, government employees and police officials who violate such rights.

“I abandoned the idea of a new nationality statute on the grounds that the Party and government leadership will take concrete measures to respect and implement the Constitution and the laws of the Socialist Republic of Rumania. My opinion with respect to the nationality statute is that as soon as those provisions of the Constitution and other laws pertaining to the nationalities are implemented, in other words, when the nationalities are granted the unobstructed use of their rights, the proposal for a nationality statute becomes unnecessary. In that event, I am willing to give up the idea which was presented in my letter to Comrade Verdet.

“What I do consistently maintain is that definite steps must be taken toward the elimination of the existing shortcomings and abuses, wherever and in whatever form they appear.”

During the discussion, you asked me to be patient, because the Party would take steps to remedy the mistakes which had been committed. I was gratified by your assertion that these steps would be implemented after a thorough and detailed analysis of the recommendations which I, and many other nationality representatives in Rumania had made. Though I did not trust entirely in these promises, I hoped and impatiently waited for the deeds to follow. Unfortunately, practically nothing has been done to solve these problems, to change the situation of the national minorities. I am now compelled by these broken promises to raise this question again. What has happened in the area of minority problems, has engendered only dissatisfaction.

In the area of education the opportunity for children to study in the mother tongue has narrowed even further. Classes in the mother tongue have been eliminated. The discriminatory Decree Law 258 was not repealed. In the Bánát and the Mezőség region of Transylvania there are communities and cities where there is not a single Hungarian-language class, elementary or trade school. In Moldavia, in entirely Hungarian Csángó communities, no form of education in the mother tongue exists.

THE TRANSYLVANIAN QUARTERLY