BUCHAREST, April 29 (Reuters) – Romanian Prime Minister Adrian Nastase has
asked the country's General Prosecutor to investigate radical ethnic
Hungarians for making fresh demands for territorial autonomy, the
government said on Tuesday.

Calls by leaders of Romania's 1.7 million ethnic Hungarians after the 1989
fall of communism for more rights, including autonomy, met stiff
opposition and ignited Romanian fears over the future of the central
province Transylvania.

Renewed demands for territorial autonomy came at the weekend at a
conference of the National Council of Hungarians (CNM) in the
Transylvanian town of Odorheiul Secuiesc (Szekelyudvarhely).

In a statement the government said that "while fully observing the right
to free association," Nastase had asked the General Prosecutor to
investigate the group whose declared objectives included "cultural and
territorial autonomy."

The first article in Romania's Constitution proclaims the Balkan country
of 22 million people to be an "indivisible nation state."

The newly-created CNM groups ethnic Hungarian politicians who present
themselves as a more radical alternative to the Hungarian Democratic Union
of Romania (UDMR), which claims to represent the interests of Romania's
ethnic Hungarians. The CNM says UDMR has "abandoned the ideals of the
ethnic Hungarians."

"It's not a crime to ask for autonomy… We should have the right to
self-determination," CNM leader Balazs Izsak told state news agency
Rompres after the conference.

Analysts say the UDMR's balanced approach in recent years to other
sensitive issues, including tuition in Hungarian in universities and the
use of the Hungarian language in court, has helped defuse ethnic passions
and ensure political stability.

The UDMR is also a political ally in parliament of the leftist ruling
Social Democratic Party.

Romanian nationalists have in the past accused ethnic Hungarians of
plotting to rejoin Transylvania to Hungary, which ruled the land from 1867
to 1918 and occupied it again during World War Two.

Hungarians and Romanians each claim Transylvania as the cradle of their
civilisation, and three people were killed and scores were injured in
ethnic clashes in the Transylvanian town of Tirgu Mures in 1991.

However, ethnic problems have eased in recent years as Romania has
presented itself as a bulwark of stability in the Balkans, compared to the
deadly ethnic conflicts in the neighbouring former Yugoslavia.

In 1996, Bucharest and Budapest signed a political treaty guaranteeing
their borders and setting aside territorial claims.

04/29/03 06:33 ET
Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

ON THE REUTERS REPORT "ROMANIA'S RADICAL HUNGARIANS CALL FOR AUTONOMY"
(reply by L.Sz.)

In the April 29 report titled "Romania's radical Hungarians call for autonomy" by Reuters, it was said referring to Transylvania that Hungary "ruled the land from 1867 to 1918 and occupied it again during World War Two."  On the first historical period mentioned, that from 1867 to 1918, to say that Hungary ruled over Transylvania appears ambiguous at best, for just to say that Hungary "ruled" over Transylvania makes it sound as if the former principality was a foreign land, alien to Hungary and to its history.  Even the reference to the effect that Hungary "ruled" Transylvania from 1867 to 1918 omits a thousand years of history which, by not being alluded to appears as if they never existed.  Now the point is that history is important, but its knowledge as a whole is even more important to gain a balanced an accurate image of the past.  This is necessary, for if the past of a country is truncated by a writer who utilizes fragments just cut off from a historical continuum, because it seems convenient to suit a story, then the parts of the country's history are taken out of context from the whole and could be put to serve political agendas instead of the historical truth.  With this I do not mean to suggest that the author of the Reuters piece I am commenting about was acting in an insidious way. Not at all!  But his putting together of information in the way I am here criticizing could be interpreted by some in such a fashion as to suit their attempts at distorting the historical truth.  And the historical truth is that there has been a Hungarian sovereign presence in Transylvania since at least the 10th century, with Transylvania being uninterruptedly linked to the rest of Hungary legally, culturally and spiritually – this last point in reference to the idea of a whole and indivisible Hungarian people or nation – for one thousand years, with the cultural and spiritual links continuing until now.          
       
        Now here are the facts.  At least since the 10th century there has been a Hungarian sovereign rule over Transylvania, beginning with the government of the Hungarian gyulas.  And since the year 1003, when King Saint István occupied Transylvania and took control of it from the gyula, the region has been directly linked to matters concerning the Kingdom until 1918, being fused together until the Ottoman occupation of the16th century, indirectly connected when Transylvania was an autonomous Hungarian principality or Hungarian province for roughly the next 300 years, and then directly joined from 1867 until 1918. 
      Also, despìte the Ottoman occupation of large parts of Hungary in the 16th century and with the kingdom divided on top of that by the the lands occupied by the rivals King Ferdinand of Habsburg and King John Szapolyai, when the Treaty of Speyer was signed to bring peace and unity to Hungary from its internal political division, according to Gábor Barta the treaty "endorsed the principle of a united Hungary" and gave to the son of King John Szapolyai, John Sigismund, the title of Prince of Transylvania.  The treaty was ratified by the Transylvanian nobility in 1571 under the auspices of King Maximilian I of Habsburg.  As just has been mentioned, despite the Turkish occupation of Hungary and the political divisions of the country, Hungary was seen as one country that included Transylvania, even though the autonomous principality of Transylvania was established as a result of the Treaty of Speyer.
      The Habsburgs recognized the indivisible nature of the Kingdom of Hungary, and as their forces were defeating the Turks on Hungarian soil in the late 17th century, their occupation of the autonomous Principality of Transylvania in 1690 was in their eyes justified by the fact that a Habsburg was the King of Hungary, and as bearer of the Holy Crown of Saint István he was the legitimate lord of Transylvania.  Again, Hungary and Transylvania were seen by the Holy Roman Emperor as one Kingdom of Hungary.  However, Transylvania was maintained as a separate province over which every Habsburg King of Hungary laid a claim of sovereignty on account of their condition as Hungary's monarchs.  The Hungarian revolution of 1848 put briefly an end to this separation, with Hungary and Transylvania uniting again.  Such a condition was eliminated by the Austrian occupation of Hungary with the defeat in the battlefield of Hungary's independence from Vienna.  Then, the 1867 Compromise reintegrated Transylvania to the rest of Hungary until 1918. 
Returning to the Reuters article, perhaps it would have been more appropriate for its author to have said that Transylvania was part of Hungary until 1918, or that it was Hungarian until that fateful year.  However, his apparent lack of even a superficial historical knowledge of Hungary might have been the cause why he wrote of Transylvania as being merely "ruled" by Hungary from 1867 to 1918, as if before a close relationship between the two did not exist.  In any case, it was for 300 years that Transylvania became an autonomous Hungarian principality or a mostly Hungarian province separate from the Kingdom of Hungary, from the 16th century till 1867, because of the Ottoman occupation of central Hungary, the internal political divisions of the realm, and a Habsburg tactic to divide Hungary to prevent a united country from becoming a reality again, in which case it could have become strong enough to attempt its independence from its Austrian rulers. However, Hungarian Transylvania never lost its ties to the rest of the kingdom. [In the words of Béla Köpeczi,"neither Ottoman expansion nor Habsburg rule was able to undermine the consciousness of an independent Hungary, and the restoration of Hungarian independence and unity was desired equally by both the Hungarian subjects of the Habsburg kingdom and those living in the Transylvanian principality."]  
      About the Reuters article reference that Transylvania was "occupied" during the Second World War, it was only the northern part of Transylvania that was regained by Hungary, which under the Second Vienna Award of August 30, 1940, was legally returned by the Rumanian government to Budapest. 
      Following the language used in the Reuters article, it could be said that West Germany "occupied" East Germany in 1990 and is "ruling" over East Germany ever since.  Or that Greece since it declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1822 has been "occupying" Greek-inhabited territories at the expense of the Turks and that now in the 21st century it is merely "ruling" over them.  Would not this sound ludicrous?  The same is to imply that Magyar-inhabited Hungary merely "ruled" over Magyar-inhabited Transylvania, or that it simply "occupied" Magyar-populated northern Transylvania in World War II.  But if we consider that for brief periods of history Transylvania was not governed by Hungarians for the last one thousand years, as when the Austrians imposed direct military rule over the region with the defeat of the 1848 Hungarian revolution, the period of Rumanian or Wallachian domination of Transylvania, roughly 80 years in the 20th century, does not amount to much. Perhaps, it would be more appropriate to say that so far Rumania has ruled over the whole of Transylvania and other Hungarian territories since it occupied them in 1919 and again in 1944.

Discussion/Fórum