Letter to the Editor
The Washington Times
Dear Editor:
Dale McFeatters is right to congratulate Kosovars on their independence
[Kosovo goes out on its own, February 20, 2008]. Europe appears to be
pursuing two contradictory policies — integration and disintegration.
Closer examination reveals that both occurrences are synergistic and promote
democracy. As nations govern themselves, they simultaneously choose to
become part of the larger multilateral European Union. This is the new
Europe which should be welcomed by all who wish to advance security,
stability and democracy on a continent that not so long ago was wracked by
violence and two isms — Nazism and Communism — that proved to be scourges
of mankind and civilization.
Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia is the most recent nail in
the coffin of the old Europe that was ill advisedly crafted by vengeful and
short-sighted peacemakers following the First World War and reinforced by
the post World War II arrangements. That order unceremoniously and almost
instantaneously collapsed with the end of the Cold War. Nations throughout
the region seized the opportunity to realize their long-cherished hopes to
exercise external self-determination. For example, Croatians, and Slovenians
escaped Serbia's stranglehold, albeit only after military conflict.
Montenegro is now independent as is Kosovo. Slovaks broke away from Prague
in the peaceful velvet divorce of 1993.
Ironically, none of these nations can realistically point to any greater
historically better grounded basis for their aspirations than the
languishing indigenous Hungarian communities in the Central Europe. While
these other nations of the region exercised the right of self-determination
and drastically changed the map of Central and Eastern Europe, the Hungarian
historical communities continue to live as minorities in the newly divided
successor states.
The issue is not their status but that they are still living with the
stifling status quo that threatens their culture, as they are denied a host
of minority rights and the right to autonomy – cultural or territorial. Even
the current post-communist Romanian government, for example, refuses to
restore the Hungarian language university in Cluj (Kolozsvar) that had been
forcibly eliminated by Ceausescu. Along with Slovakia, it rejects its
Hungarian minority's autonomy proposals that would ensure local
self-governance, not independence or revisionism, and the protection of that
minority's unique culture and ethnic identity.
The new Europe should finally embrace this minority and its democratically
asserted quest for collective rights and autonomy.
Frank Koszorus, Jr.
Chairman, International Relations Committee
The American Hungarian Federation
