The Eighth Hungarian Tribe, 1983 (10. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1983-10-01 / 10. szám
THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE PERSECUTED HUNGARIANS OF TRANSYLVANIA Year after year the Government of tthe United States, with the blessing of the Congress, has rewarded the national-communist government of the Socialist Republic of Rumania with the “Most Preferred Nation” status, a substantial aid to the economy of that country, in spite of the fact that the Ceausescu-regime, ruling Rumania with an iron fist, was far from deserving American aid. It has been proven again and again in books, articles, memorandums, reports, and complaints registered with the proper Congressional Committees that the government of Rumania is constantly in violation of Human Rights, Minority Rights and all international agreements and treaties in regard to the protection of the freedom of Churches and the freedom of ethnic minorities. It has been proven again and again that the Ceausescu regime is embarked on ethnic genocide, on the cultural and physical destruction of the almost three-million strong native Hungarian population of Transylvania, today a province occupied by Rumania. Besides the above collective crimes and abuses, it has been proven that the Rumanian government, through its extremely brutal political organization, the SECURITATE, has killed, maimed, tortured thousands and thousands of innocent Hungarians for no other reason, but their Hungarian nationality, of which they were and are justifiably proud. In spite of all these well proven facts, due to an effective lobby of certain industrial enterprizes previously published in this Quarterly, our Government has renewed the “Most Preferred Nation” status of Rumania year after year, thereby abandoning the just cause of close to three-million native Hungarians under Rumanian rule, who are fighting for their survival against the most brutal dicttorship on earth. However, with the less and less enthusiastic approval of the Congress. This year it seemed that finally the time had come when American aid and American friendship to the government of Dictator Ceausescu would be made dependent upon the fulfillment of the very modest and highly justified demands of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Organization published in their underground paper, the ‘ELLENPONTOK’. These demands are nothing more than the very basic requirements to the survival of the native Hungarian population in their homeland. Nevertheles, our hopes did not materialize. We are listing here events in chronological order as they occured in the course of this past summer. It began on June 3, 1983 with President Reagan’s shocking and unexpected message to Congress proposing the restoration of the previously suspended Preferred Nation Status to the government of Rumania, based on the promise of that government to revoke the socalled emigration tax. On June 30, 1983, Resolution No. 256 was submitted by the Honorable Congressman Philiph M. Crane (R. Illinois), presented to Congress to be referred to the Ways and Means Committee. The Resolution was supported by Congressmen Schultze (R. PA.) Ritter (R. PA.), Stump (R. Arizona), Siljander (R. Michigan), Rudd (R. Arizona), Kemp, (R, New York), Carney (R. New York), Solomon (R. New York), Kasich (R. Ohio), Hartnett (R. South Carolina), Spence (R. South Carolina), Rogers (R. Kentucky), Daniel Crane (R. Illinois), Sundquist (R. Tennessee), Sensenbrenner (R. Wisconsin) and McDonald (D. Georgia). Text of the above resolution No. 256: “Be resolved that the House of Representatives does not approve the extension of the authority costained in section 402-c of the Trade act 1974 recommended by the President to the Congress on June 3, 1983, with respect to the Socialist Republic of Romania.” On July 6, 1983, proposed by Congressman Don Ritter (R. PA.) the following letter was signed by 219 Congressmen (a majority of Congress) and sent to George Schultz, Secretary of State: “We the undersigned members of the United States Congress would like to call your attention to the continued deprivation of human and self determinatios right of the national minorities in Romania, particularly the 2.5 million Hungarians assigned to Romania in the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty. We congratulate you on your firm stand against the emigration tax imposed by the Romanian government on emigrants, and we urge you to include into your negotiating agenda the human an self-determination right of the Hungarians in Romania. For more than two decades, Romanian pressure against the Hungarians in Transylvania assumed characteristics of ethnocide, including complete suppression of the social and youth activities and the internal independence of the Hungarian churches; destruction of the Hungarian-language schools in existence in 1958 and their replacement with a steadily declining number of Hungarian-language “sections” in the Romanian schools; the systematic destruction of the Hungarian past of the province, and finally a conscious dispersal of the Hungarian intelligentsia and the settlement of large number of Romanians amidst the Hungarian regions of Transylvania. Last THE TRANSYLVANIAN QUARTER!' II
