Statement of László Hámos, President
Hungarian Human Rights Foundation
at a Briefing on

Romania: Moving Toward NATO and the EU

before the

Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe

Wednesday, October 1, 2003
2212 Rayburn House Office Building

The Hungarian Human Rights Foundation (HHRF) appreciates the opportunity to submit this statement. We especially value the attention the Commission is devoting today, fourteen years after the fall of communism, to the continuing need for Romania to fully implement the values of democracy, human rights and respect for the rights of minorities. Prior to the first round of NATO enlargement, the three candidate countries (Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary) were closely scrutinized to ascertain the degree to which domestic reforms and friendly relations with neighboring states qualified them for membership in the NATO “community of shared values.” During the current round of enlargement, the Administration and Congress, pressed to form alliances in the face of the terrorist threat to global security, essentially overlooked the membership criteria so important during the first round. For NATO to retain its role as the premier political and military alliance of our time, however, it must take care not to import the very sources of instability which it seeks to combat. Compliance with the NATO criteria, therefore, must occur, if not prior to accession, then after it. For these reasons HHRF believes that the Commission briefing today is a timely and indispensable service to the interests of America and NATO.

Romanian government action to institute genuine respect for the rights of national minorities, including 1.5 million ethnic Hungarians, has been uneven and deficient. This summary will focus on the shortcomings in six areas. HHRF urges the Commission to highlight these matters in future discussions and communications with Romanian officials.

1. Denying the Symbols of Ethnic Identity: Duplicity and Unlawful Acts in Barring the Freedom Statue of Arad

Official delays and breaking the repeated pledge to re-erect an important Hungarian symbol—the Freedom Statue in the city of Arad—represents a current illustration of flagrant disregard for minority sentiments, the deliberate polarization of ethnic communities and artificial heightening of tensions, central government action to overrule local decision-making, and a seemingly purposeful disruption of harmonious bilateral relations.
Following months of restoration, on October 5, 2003 the Freedom Statue—originally erected in 1890 to commemorate the 1848 Hungarian revolution against Austrian rule—was to be ceremoniously unveiled at Fireman’s Square in the Western Transylvanian city of Arad. What should have been fulfillment of a reasonable and legitimate Hungarian community and local aspiration, has resulted in the alienation of the Hungarian community and the escalation of domestic and bilateral tensions through the Romanian leadership and central authorities’ subterfuge and backtracking.

Restoring the statue to its former dignity was a cherished desire of the Hungarian community since the 1989 overthrow of communism. Although already included in the 1998 Romanian-Hungarian Bilateral Agreement, it was in 2001 that the issue was included in the Cooperation Agreement between the ruling Social Democrat Party (PSD) and the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (DAHR), reinforced through an agreement at the county level as well. Considering the matter on the track to resolution, DAHR took it off the agenda for their 2002 and 2003 agreements with the PSD. In fact, on November 26, 2002, the Arad City Council voted 2.2 Billion Lei (approx. $66,000) to restore the statue and re-erect it at a central location. Meanwhile the Freedom Statue Society—a domestic NGO— began an international fundraising campaign, collected 300,000 Euros, and began restoration work. Unbeknownst to the Hungarian community and its leadership, the National Public Historic Commission of the Ministry of Culture issued a secret decision against the restoration on July 18, 2003. The national leadership concealed the news of its about-face until the well-known nationalist PSD Senator Adrian Paunescu “accidentally” revealed it in an August 18 television interview. Consequently, work ceased at the site.

Despite appeals by the DAHR leadership and intercessions by Hungarian President Ferenc Mádl and Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy, the Romanian leadership remains unwilling to honor its numerous commitments to allow the statue. What is most disturbing and perplexing is, why?

Whereas true cooperation could have been achieved on a clearly local matter, it has been deliberately escalated to the level of a national crisis, creating an artificial polarization between Romanians and Hungarians. On September 30, Romanian Prime Minister Adrian Nastase said in Strasbourg that “the sensitivities of Romanians also have to be considered,” thereby once again hiding behind pressure from extreme nationalists who apparently need to be appeased.

After needlessly antagonizing the Hungarian minority, the Romanian leadership is now offering a “compromise,” where none is warranted, to create a “park of reconciliation” which would house the Freedom Statue along with other Romanian symbols. The message to the Romanian people is unmistakable: whatever reaffirms Hungarian identity, the region’s Hungarian past, and is “only” Hungarian, can only be interpreted as “anti-Romanian.”

2. Church and Community Property Restitution Still Unresolved

Romania’s failure to restore 2,140 properties confiscated from Hungarian churches represents a fourfold breach of Helsinki commitments. By failing to undertake timely and necessary measures, the government (1) curtails religious liberties, (2) violates the sanctity of private property, (3) encroaches on the rights of minority communities, and (4) denies the material resources to build civil society.

Fourteen years after the fall of communism, on June 25, 2002, the Romanian parliament adopted Law No. 501/2002 on restitution of properties illegally confiscated from religious denominations under communism in the period 1945-1989. The four historic Hungarian Churches (Roman Catholic, Protestant, Lutheran and Unitarian), and the community they serve, were filled with hope that the restitution process would finally begin. The Law, not prepared in consultation with the affected Churches is grossly deficient, however, and major remedies are warranted. Beyond these shortcomings, still other government-imposed impediments prevent progress. Since the overdue October 17, 2002 adoption of the law’s implementing provisions, the Hungarian Human Rights Foundation has issued six documents monitoring developments (http://www.hhrf.org/natoexpansion/index.htm). In January 2003, in consultation with the Churches themselves, we identified twelve minimum measures which the Romanian government needs to take in order for the restitution process to begin (http://www.hhrf.org/13requirements.htm).
Of particular note is that the aforementioned Law does not address the issue of properties also confiscated under Communism from minority communities (“communal properties”), thus leaving this a still unresolved issue. In May 2003 a proposal for drafting such a law, based on two former government decrees (Nos. 13/1998 and 83/1999), was submitted to the Romanian cabinet by the then-Ministry for Public Administration. The government has yet to even consider the document, much less introduce the promised bill in Parliament. The affected communities should be included in the drafting process.

The Special Committee set up to implement the Law has met a mere three times and ruled on only 118 claims out of a total 7,568 submitted by the March 2 deadline. The total number of claims approved at these meetings for the four historic Hungarian churches was 71. The rightful owners have, however, still not regained title to, or occupancy of, even these 71 properties, since the Special Committee has not mailed them the necessary written decisions. At its current pace, it will be nine years before the Special Committee merely processes the claims.

3. Failure to Restore the Independent Hungarian State University in Cluj/Kolozsvár

Education in the native language is probably the single most important factor for ensuring the collective survival of an ethnic minority. Yet, another year will pass without adequate Hungarian-language education at the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj/Kolozsvár. Before the end of the 2002/03 school year, ethnic Hungarian professors at the institution again submitted a request to the university senate to establish two Hungarian divisions (humanities and natural sciences), which would integrate the existing Hungarian departments. As in the past, the issue continues to be passed back and forth between the university leadership, which cries insufficient monies; and the government, notably Education Minister Ecaterina Andronescu, who evades action under the guise of “academic autonomy.” The current Romanian government is on record avowing that it will facilitate this measure: (1) the 2002 Cooperation Agreement between the ruling PSD and the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania states it, and (2) at a April 19, 2002 Bucharest meeting with representatives of the Hungarian Human Rights Foundation, Romanian Prime Minister Adrian Nastase pledged that the issue would be quickly resolved.

Background: Immediately after the 1989 Romanian revolution, the governing National Salvation Front explicitly pledged to restore the independent Hungarian-language Bolyai State University, which the former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu abolished in 1959 by forcibly merging it with the Romanian Babes University. The demise of the 500 year-old Bolyai University heralded the regime’s campaign to eliminate all native-language education and severely traumatized the Hungarian community. Today, the numbers show that ethnic Hungarians are disproportionately underrepresented in the country’s colleges and universities, thus under-educated and disadvantaged compared to ethnic Rumanians. According to the 2002 national census, 6.6 percent of the country’s population is ethnic Hungarian, yet in the 2001/02 academic year, merely 4.3 percent of students enrolled in institutions of higher education were of Hungarian nationality.

4. Anti-Hungarian Bias in the Judicial System

The selective prosecution of ethnic Hungarians in Romania has not even been addressed, much less corrected, to this day. On February 12, 2003, the last ethnic Hungarian imprisoned for participation in revolutionary acts related to the 1989 overthrow of communism, Antal Reiner, was released on good behavior. The release of Reiner, a political prisoner who was not pardoned by Romanian President Ion Illiescu as would have been warranted, does not unfortunately signify that justice was finally served. In fact, none of the 13 ethnic Hungarians selectively prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to a combined total of 145 years for their December 1989 resistance to the Ceausescu regime have been rehabilitated. Not only were these individuals wrongfully sentenced and most imprisoned with no legal or financial recourse, but for some, the victimization by the Romanian judicial system has not ended. For example, the court ordered Reiner his other co-defendants to pay 250 million Lei (approx. $8,000) in “damages.”

Background: The selective prosecution and conviction of these 13 ethnic Hungarians for actions that were hailed as “heroic” when committed by ethnic Romanians, presents compelling evidence of a strong anti-Hungarian bias in the judicial system. Of the six police fatalities that occurred in December 1989 in the two Hungarian majority inhabited counties of Hargita and Covasna—three ethnic Romanian and three ethnic Hungarian—prosecution occurred only in the ethnic Romanian cases. Consequently, 13 ethnic Hungarians from these two counties were handed a combined sentence of 145 years, out of which 34 years and 7 months were actually served. After seven men were freed by presidential pardon in March 1994, three of them died, two committing suicide. Even though a January 1990 general amnesty (Law 3/1990, Article 1) issued by then Interim President Ion Iliescu had granted amnesty to participants of lynchings during the revolution, it was never applied in the above-mentioned cases.

In fact, the selective prosecution continued. The Council of Europe’s Opinion 176 of 1993 specifically called on the Romanian authorities to “reconsider in a positive manner the issue of releasing those persons imprisoned on political or ethnic grounds.” But it was in 1999, a full six years later, that six defendants from Targu Secuiesc were sentenced to several years, four of them in absentia. The two who were in the country, Reiner and Dezső Héjja, were imprisoned; These six ethnic Hungarians were singled out for the lynching of the local representative of dictatorial rule, Aurel Agache, a particularly brutal police major who, on December 22, 1989, armed with his service revolver, tried to prevent the crowd from entering the local Communist Party headquarters in the town.

The Romanian legal system has served well the interests of the Agache family: Since the defendants were not able to pay the exorbitant monies awarded in “compensation” to them, the son of the deceased, Aurel Dionisie Agache, sued. Spurred on by anti-Hungarian invective generated in the Parliament by the president of the Greater Romania Party Senator Corneliu Vadim Tudor, and capitalizing on the fact that Reiner and Hejja’s records have not been expunged, justice continues to evade the true victims and condones the aggressors.

5. Obstructing Bilingualism in Public Administration

The Law on Public Administration (215/2001), adopted on May 23, 2001 mandated the use of the native language, and the display of bilingual government institution, street- and place name signs, in localities where a minority population exceeds 20 percent. As a result, a total of 1,072 localities became eligible to use the Hungarian language in public administration. However, the rule of law is seriously undermined by the near total failure to actually implement the law in Alba, Satu Mare, Arad, Maramures and Cluj counties. The centrally-appointed government Prefects—legally bound to oversee the upholding of laws locally—refuse to file charges against Cluj/Kolozsvár Mayor Gheorghe Funar and other violators.

Even where the law is ostensibly implemented, its intent is often violated. The public administration law, for example, mandates that in those local councils where a minority members make up at least one-third of the body, the native language can be used in proceedings. In the case of the Mures/Maros County Council, simultaneous translating devices were purchased in February 2003 for 800 million Lei (approx. $24,200). When the ethnic Hungarian council members, however, spoke up in Hungarian, three members from the ultra-nationalist PUNR and Greater Romania Party vehemently objected, quitting the proceedings in “protest.” Another member, Doru Opriscan of the National Liberal Party, appealed to his Hungarian colleagues not to avail themselves of their right for the sake of expediency and efficiency. The ethnic Hungarian councilors are constrained into self-censorship, since whenever one of them tries to speak in Hungarian, the debacle is repeated. The 75 percent Hungarian-inhabited Sfintu Gheorghe has had its translating apparatus ever since the law was adopted two years ago. The three ethnic Romanian members of the city council, however, refused to use the headset, because it “singles them out.” After two years of refusal to participate in the work of the body, except to vote against every proposal brought before the council, a compromise was recently reached: The proceedings are translated into Romanian and now amplified, so the offended members do not have to wear the headsets.

6. Hindering Freedom of Association; Suppressing Decentralization and Local Autonomy

The Romanian government’s commitment to plurality, freedom of expression and association, and the fundamental democratic underpinnings of decentralization and local autonomy are seriously called into question by the banning of political parties dedicated to these principles. A case in point is the fate of the multi-ethnic Transylvania-Banat League.

On February 3, 2003 the Bucharest Court of Appeal rejected an appeal logged by the Transylvania-Banat League against a recent Bucharest Court decision that had declined to register the organization as a political party. Subsequently, president of the banned entity, Sabin Gherman, told the Hungarian-language daily Krónika that the League would initiate legal action against the Romanian state at the Strasbourg European Court of Human Rights for violation of the right to association, as guaranteed by the Romanian Constitution.

The League was founded by ethnic Romanian journalist Sabin Gherman on March 23, 2002 to promote decentralization and local autonomy in Romania. On November 13, 2003, Costica Iconomu, President of the Bucharest Court rejected the League’s application alleging that the organization’s support for European regionalism undermined the Romanian nation state. The Court also objected to the fact that the League’s emblem contained the stars of the European Union’s symbol.