November 2, 2001

The Hungarian Human Rights Foundation was formed 25 years ago to call attention to the gross human rights violations of the Ceausescu regime and its persecution of the Hungarian minority. The organization mobilized, and channeled into effective political action the resources of the 1.6 million Americans who declared themselves of Hungarian ancestry in the 1990 Census. Hungarian-Americans were, and remain singularly united on restoring human rights to the 2 million-strong ethnic Hungarian community living in Romania.

Despite the Romanian government's intimidation attempts - including Ceausescu's 1978 order to assassinate to the organization's president - the Congressional movement to denounce Romania's human rights abuses grew increasingly successful. Mass demonstrations and full-page newspaper advertisements highlighted the regime's aggressive, anti-Hungarian conduct. Organization leaders testified at Congressional hearings on 25 occasions. Thousands of constituent letters, visits and phone calls with members of Congress, high-level contact with successive US administrations, including personal meetings all six Presidents since 1976, and personal presence at 10 Helsinki Review meetings all served to erode the Romanian government's undeserved standing in the international community. In the United States, the Most Favored Nation status granted to Romania in 1975 was ordered suspended in 1987 through four separate votes in Congress.

After 1989, HHRF was an early and vocal proponent of NATO enlargement to include those countries in Central and Eastern Europe which met the criteria of institutionalized human rights reforms, including full protection of the rights of national minorities. Unfortunately, 12 years after the fall of communism, Romania has barely begun to implement the needed reforms. Without a wholesale reversal of this dismal record, it is highly unlikely that the United States Senate would find the two-thirds majority needed to ratify NATO membership for Romania. The Bush Administration has shown itself especially sensitive to the abuse of religious liberties and the sanctity of private property signified by the continued government refusal to return to Hungarian churches the 1,593 properties illegally confiscated under communism.

We support the aim of our government to seek the full, institutionalized and irreversible implementation of democratic principles in Romania, including restoration of minority rights for the Hungarian community. At the same time, we remain open to redirecting the focus of US decision-makers to support Romania's NATO candidacy, provided government actions warrant such reversal. Since the inception of HHRF, our views and decisions are guided exclusively by legitimate representatives of the population directly affected, the Hungarians of Romania themselves. Unfortunately, all reports speak of a continued government failure to make progress on issues of fundamental importance to the community. For this reason, the current sentiment in the Hungarian-American community is to overtly oppose Romania's NATO accession until the country satisfies the requirements for membership.

Nevertheless, we would be prepared to consider a different approach if meaningful steps were taken in the following key areas:

The Law on Restitution of Private Property, adopted January 17, 2001, explicitly excluded communal and church properties on the promise that such properties would be covered under a separate law. While neighboring countries long ago addressed and resolved this matter, the decade-long delay by Romania constitutes an ongoing, major blow to religious freedom, civil society and the Hungarian minority's ability to maintain community and church life.

Of the 1,593 properties in question, even the handful whose return was promised under various provisional decrees (Nos. 94/2000, 1334/December 2000, 83/May 1999, 13/June 1998) have failed to materialize in all but five cases. Two significant properties where no progress has been made, and are mired in endless legalistic proceedings, are the Roman Catholic Bishopric's Palace in Oradea and the Battyaneum in Alba Iulia.

The law, no matter how lofty, is of little value without the necessary implementing legislation. In Harghita and Covasna Counties, for example, a total of 220,500 hectares of forestland stand to be returned to their rightful owners, yet today the number stands at a mere fraction of that number.

Although this law applies to former Romanian citizens living abroad, Romanian embassies and consulates have failed to disseminate the necessary information to those affected. Failure to apply for restitution by the November 14 deadline cancels all legal claim to the property in question, unfairly discriminating against those whose failure to apply was due to mere lack of knowledge.

Highly publicized as an enlightened measure at the time of its enactment, this law can have (and has had) little practical effect without the necessary implementing legislation. The governing Social Democrat Party last promised to have a draft of these provisions ready by October 31. When will the necessary provisions be enacted and implemented?

Absence of the needed legislation produces the needlessly costly and time-consuming circumstance that even where the judge, the prosecuting and defending attorneys, and all the witnesses and other participants at trial speak the same minority language, the entire proceeding must be conducted through an interpreter.

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 abolished in 1959 by forcibly merging it with the Romanian Babes University. In the past decade, successive Romanian governments have dishonored the pledge through extra-legal measures (unlawfully ignoring a 1995 petition signed by a half-million citizens), diversion (offering a German-Hungarian university never seriously intended), deceit (claiming that the supposed "multi-cultural" character of the rump institution somehow compensates for the real article) and even threatening to disallow a privately-funded initiative (through proposals to deny accreditation unless "sufficient" Romanian-language instruction is offered).

After so much obfuscation, a minimal, good-faith gesture would be to allow Hungarian-language divisions, and grant expanded decision-making powers to the Hungarian faculty, within the existing state-run institutions.

4. Insure the Right to Freedom from Harassment, Intimidation and Persecution

The continued selective prosecution and conviction of ethnic Hungarians for resistance to the Ceausescu regime in December 1989 present compelling evidence of a strong anti-Hungarian bias in the judicial system. The specific case of these five individuals from Targu Secuiesc is compounded by recent anti-minority hysteria in the Romanian Parliament by Corneliu Vadim Tudor.

Antal Reiner and Dezsõ Héjja have been imprisoned in Miercurea Ciuc since July and August of this year, respectively. The other three defendants were sentenced in absentia. All of the defendants, except Héjja, previously fled Romania for fear of not being granted a fair trial, but Reiner ultimately returned. In a similar case (four ethnic Hungarians from Dealu and three from Zetea, convicted and sentenced to 15-20 years imprisonment), President Iliescu issued a pardon in March 1994. Since neither of the above-mentioned five individuals was amnestied under Article I of Law 3/1990 as would have been warranted, a presidential pardon would be the appropriate remedy.