The Eighth Hungarian Tribe, 1982 (9. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1982-10-01 / 10. szám

these schools by a steadily declining number of Hungarian sections in Rumanian schools; 2nd: the destruction of the documents of the Hungarian past of Transylvania; and 3rd: the concious dispersion of the Hungarian intelligentsia into Rumanian areas and the settlement of large number of Rumanian colonists into the Hungarian areas of Transylvania;

Whereas the Socialist Republic of Rumania actively interferes with the internal affairs of all its religious communities, severely limiting or banning all their social and teaching activities and discriminates against their members in employment, education, and promotion, particularly with regard to the members of the Catholic and Protestant Churches which are composed of Hungarians and Germans, and

Whereas the two million five hundred thousand Hungarians in Transylvania are entitled to selfdetermination, a right protected under the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Now, therefore, be it RESOLVED, that the House of Representatives —

1. deplores the activities of the Government of the Socialist Republic of Rumania denying the rights of the Hungarians and people of other nationalities in Transylvania; and

2. requests the President and the Secretary of State to discuss the issues of human rights of the Hungarians in Transylvania, INCLUDING THE RIGHT OF NATIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION, with the Government of the Socialist Republic of Rumania and with other appropriate governments.

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“My Crime: I Spoke Hungarian!”

Under this title a striking postal card appeared this year in France, published by the Groupement pour les Droits des Minorites, rue Honoré Chevalier 12, Paris. The picture on the card shows a lonely little boy, head bent, facing a bare, dismal brick wall with a large sign on his back which reads:

“/ spoke Hungarian!”

The picture was published in several newspapers telling the free world the unbelieveable sad story

that there are more than 600,000 Hungarian schoolchildren today, forced into the newly established ultra-nationalistic Rumanian school system in Transylvania, who are strictly forbidden the use of their native tongue, even on the playground, during recess. Any youngster caught in uttering just a few whispered words in Hungarian to one of his friends or relatives is severly punished. The punishment for such seditious behavior varies from standing in the corner for hours with a sign on the back, sometimes holding heavy cement blocks in their hands, to twenty-five strokes with a heavy stick which draws blood and leaves serious bruizes.

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Condemned to Starvation

To several observers it seems that the Ceausescu government of Rumania is introducing a new method to rid Transylvania from its native Hungarian population. Beside deportations into forced labor camps, hospitals where the unfortunate inmates are being used for experimental purposes or simple acts of murder perpetrated by hated Securitate, the Hungarians are facing now a new terror: hunger.

Travelers returning from Rumania verify the news that while the entire country suffers of certain food shortages due to the mismanagement of the Ceausescu regime, authorities in charge of food distribution keep the needed supplies away from Hungarian inhabited regions.

Hungarian villagers, whose farms were “nationalized” are not even allowed to use their own backyard ovens for baking their own bread. Once a week they have to stand in long lines in front of the police station waiting for a certain truck which brings their bread from distant factories. The bread they are forced to buy is not only poor quality but is handed out to them in such small quantities that it hardly lasts for two or three days. Since they are not allowed to raise their own beef, pork or even poultry, the Hungarian diet in Transylvania conssists mostly of greens gathered from the hillside and potatoes, cabbages grown in their small gardens. With winter coming and food supply cut shorter and shorter by government agencies, the death toll among the elderly and the young will certainly will rise. Which is exactly what Dictator Ceausescu is trying to accomplish in his quest of exterminating the Hungarian population.

THE TRANSYLVANIAN QUARTERLY

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