AMERIKAI MAGYAR KOALICIÓ NYILATKOZATA

Continuing Dissatisfaction of Hungarian Minority in Romania:
Church Property Restitution Lags
Public Hungarian University Restoration Still Blocked
Agreement on Arad "Statue of Liberty" Scrapped at Last Minute

During their upcoming visit to Washington DC, Romanian President Ian Iliescu and accompanying officials will claim major achievements of democratic reform in Romania. However, facts and figures cast serious doubt on these claims. In reality, the Iliescu/Nastase government's policies of broken promises and anti-minority actions have caused growing dissatisfaction among the 1.5 million-strong historic Hungarian community in Romania.

The following three areas of government (in)action are offered as examples of ongoing problems ethnic Hungarians are forced to face in present-day Romania.

I. Restitution of confiscated church property

During 2003 the church property restitution process has been disappointingly slow, inefficient and unjust. It can only be explained by the lack of political will to at least partly redress the wrongs of the past. Of the more than 2,000 church properties documented and claimed by Hungarian churches, to date decisions have been handed down in only seventy-one cases. And most of these decisions exist merely on paper: actual implementation of property return is held up by the intransigence of local authorities, including the judiciary. It is the consensus of Hungarian religious and political leaders in Romania that restitution is and will continue to be short-circuited by collusion between national and local officials, as well as a non-independent judiciary, for the sole purpose of preventing the reestablishment of independent religious and educational institutions.

The ongoing saga of the Kolozsvar (Cluj) Reformed Kollegium

As a result of wide cooperation among the Hungarian American community and US officials in Washington and Romania, the long overdue return of one building of the historic Kolozsvar Reformed Kollegium was accomplished in January, 2003. Church and school officials have reported they are convinced the old building's return was due solely to the attention the case generated in the United States.

However, as students and faculty moved in on two floors of this 200 year-old dormitory building, they were told a restaurant, library and dental clinic would remain on the premises for five more years. As the Cluj Reformed Church District awaited the restitution of the larger original Hungarian school building next door, still occupied by the Romanian Sincai Liceaul, local authorities indicated that the original property registration of the five-building church property complex would be contested in court, and thus, the new building cannot be considered for restitution as the original property of the church district! This decision also affects the playing fields between the two buildings.

II. Romania continues to deny restoration of public Hungarian university

The restoration of an autonomous, publicly funded Hungarian university in Cluj (forcibly merged in 1959 into Babes-Bolyai University) has long been a major aspiration of the Hungarian community. Examples abound in Europe of minority-language universities maintained by majority governments for the purpose of assuring the survival of a minority's language and culture. In spite of repeated pledges of the Iliescu-Nastase government to support this effort, to date there has been no progress on this issue of key importance to the Hungarian community.

III. Government does abrupt about-face on agreement to restore historic monument in Arad

Local officials in Arad approved plans to restore the "Liberty Statues," originally erected in 1890, to their original location in a city square. (The statues are a monument to the 13 Hungarian generals executed in Arad by Habsburg rulers on October 6, 1849 – still com-memorated as a day of mourning by the whole Hungarian nation.) Despite earlier pledges to support this restoration, the Nastase government unexpectedly overruled the plans made by Arad officials, ordered that preparations of the site be stopped, and instead proposed that "a park of reconciliation" be created in the city. By blocking this important symbol of Hungarian history, the government again showed flagrant disregard for minority sentiments, overruled local decisions, and caused further alienation of the Hungarian community of Romania.

It is difficult to reconcile the claims of President Iliescu and Prime Minister Nastase of having created a model minority policy in Romania, when evidence clearly indicates that democratic policies often remain only on paper, and their enforcement is consistently blocked either by central government interference or by local-level intransigence backed up by court rulings. The consequence is growing dissatisfaction among the Hungarian community. As long as government actions reinforce the feelings of the Hungarian minority that they are second-class citizens in their own country, it will not be possible to establish the mutual trust so necessary for a functioning democratic society in Romania.

Outside opinion – especially that of the United States – matters a great deal to Romanian government officials. Members of the U.S. Administration should use this positive influence to encourage concrete, positive steps toward achieving a civil society in Romania, where the legitimate, democratically expressed aspirations of the Hungarian minority are achieved in practice, and not merely given lip service.

The time has come for the Romanian leadership to realize that membership in NATO and eventually in the European Union requires their active commitment to democratic reforms in all aspects of Romanian society, including vast improvements in minority policy.

Statement of the Hungarian American Coalition
October 22, 2003

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AMERICAN HUNGARIAN FEDERATION
OF METROPOLITAN WASHINGTON, DC
A Founding Member of the Hungarian American Coalition
November 3, 2003

Letter to the Editor

The Washington Times

Dear Editor:

President Ion Iliescu extols the progress he claims Romania has made since the collapse of communism [Romanian optimism, Embassy Row, October 30]. Considering the extent of the deprivation, oppression and misery caused by Ceausescu�s brutal dictatorship, Romania can only improve, no matter how half-hearted the reforms or the lack of government transparency.

Although there has been some progress on the road to democratization, democracy is hardly �consolidated,� as Iliescu asserts. Corruption is endemic, military reform is wanting, freedom of the press is not fully guaranteed, the judiciary is not completely independent, and Holocaust denial and revisionism can be found at the highest levels of government in today�s Romania. More than a decade since Ceausescu�s fall, Romania fails to grant its more than 1.5 million ethnic Hungarians rights guaranteed them under the constitution and refuses to return their communal religious and educational properties confiscated by communists.

NATO overlooks the lack of Western-style civil society because of Romania�s strategic location and the exigencies of the conflict in Iraq. It can be hoped that NATO will insist that Romania implement much-needed reforms and adopt those shared Western values that defined the alliance and gave it the moral strength to prevail in the Cold War.
Sincerely, Frank Koszorus, Jr.
President

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