REASONS:
1. It has been documented again
and again in the U.S. House of Representatives, in the United
Nations, during the conferences of Belgrade and Madrid that Rumania
is today the most terroristic police state on the face of the
Earth, where the number of atrocities (including murder) committed
against national and religious minorities increases year after
year.
2. During the hostage crisis Rumania
supported the revolutionary regime of Iran by transporting Iranian
oil through Russia in order to circumvent the American boycott.
3. Rumania furnished proof again
of her solidarity with the Soviet Union by aiding Russian espionage
against the United States through the Rumanian embassy in Washington.
4.It is not fair to the American
taxpayer, and is harmful to the economy of the United States to
aid the most oppressive regime on Earth!
We, the undersigned duly elected
officers of the United States Branches of the Transylvanian World
Federation and Affiliated Organizations in seventeen states are
deeply concerned about the native Hungarian population of Transylvania,
today a province of the Socialist Republic of Rumania. Close
to threemillion Hungarians, for centuries part of the ruling
majority inhabiting the ancient Hungarian homeland, were thrown
into minority status due to the dismemberment of Hungary, and
are facing cultural genocide and constant physical abuse from
the government of the Socialist Republic of Rumania. Since we
firmly believe that the Government of the United States of America
is in the position to help and save these people from the ruthless
oppression of an ultranationalistic police state, therefore:
We Petition
THE PRESIDENT
AND
THE CONGRESS OF THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
to update the Trade Act of1974
in order to reflect the provisions of Basket Three of the Helsinki
Final Agreement, at least as it applies to the countries which
signed it.
The Heilsinki Final Agreement
was signed in July 1975. The trade agreement with Rumania was
signed in August 1975, based on the Trade Act of 1974. This arrangement
overrides the provisions of the Helsinki Final Agreement, and
leaves no other recourse for the native Hungarian population of
Transylvania, province of Rumania, other than to assimilate, commit
suicide, or leave their native land.
As it appears that the JacksonVanic
Amendment had its effect in enabling some to reach the land of
their dreams, the modification of the Trade Act of 1974 should
likewise have its effect in enabling people to enjoy life in their
own homeland. Thus the United States could better promote and
publicize its own principles and at the same time allow for a
profitable trade.
As Representative Vanic said in
his closing remarks at the Trade Committee hearing on June 10,
1980 (See: H serial 96128, p.278): "There is hardly
a week going by that we are not successful in settling something
here. So we shall continue in those efforts and see if we can
be helpful. If that does not work, you may have to take some other
more stringent legislative procedure."
Respectfully submitted for your
consideration:
ALBERT WASS de CZEGE president
State of Florida
DR. JOHN NADAS
general secretary
State of Ohio
MRS. ILONA BOISSENIN
Washington representative
Voice of the
Catacombs
July, 1983
We are presenting here excerpts
of the Memorandum published by the Transylvanian Underground in
November, 1982 and sent to the participating governments of the
Madrid Conference, among them the government of the United States.
Since our State Department has the entire text on file, these
excerpts serve only to bring to the attention of the general public
the desperate struggle of the threemillionstrong Hungarian
native population of Transylvania under the brutal oppression
of the Ceausescu government Many of those brave patriots who wrote,
published and distributed this Memorandum are dead now, while
others are suffering in the Rumanian torture chambers for having
had the courage to speak the truth and ask for a just solution
of the Hungarian problem in Rumania.
"The Hungarians of Transylvania
are facing the most dangeorus times of their entire history. The
laws and international agreements which are supposed to secure
our existence, serve only as camouflage to hide the actions of
the Rumanian government, which are in complete opposition to those
laws and agreements Rumania obligated itself to follow in dealing
with the ethnic minorities.
"Since we firmly believe
that two different ethnic groups can coexist only as equal partners,
we ask for the Hungarians in Transylvania the right to selfrepresentation
and the right to demand the recognition of their rights.
"We demand to be recognized
as partakers of the Hungarian cultural heritage and be allowed.
as Rumanian citizens, to keep our cultural contacts with the Hungarian
People's Republic.
"We demand the recognition
of our cultural autonomy as well as the right to selfrepresentation
as an ethnic community in Rumania.
"We demand self administraton
and share in the leadership of our country.
"We demand that the Hungarian
language be recognized as second official language in the Hungarianinhabited
districts.
"We demand equal opportunities
and equal treatment.
"We demand the right to cherish
and preserve our cultural, historical and ethnic environment.
"We demand that an International
Committee be formed, which would include Rumanian and Hungarian
representatives also, in order to examine our situation and render
unbiased decisions for the sake of our survival!"
Though the writers and editors
responsible for this message were arrested, tortured, and some
of them are probably dead by now, their voice, the voice of the
Transylvanian catacombs, can be heard all over this world and
is resounding in the hearts of free men everywhere.
APPEAL
of the New Resistance
Movement in Transylvania
On December 12, 1988, the following
appeal Romania, called NEPSZABADSAG (Freedom, for leaders of the
world):
"The democratic resistance
movement in Romania, called NEPSZABADSAG (Freedom for the People),
organized by Hungarian, German, Jewish, Ukrainian, Armenian, Greek,
Gypsy, Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Slovakian and
Turkish nationalities, composing 59% of the total population,
with the cooperation of many clear thinking Rumanians, came to
the decision to ask the United Nations, the governments of the
United States, the United Kingdom, France, the Soviet Union, Germany,
Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Austria, Finland, Denmark, The Netherlands,
Belgium, Italy, Greece, the Vatican and all religious and civic
organizations in this world TO EXERCISE INFLUENCE UPON
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF ROMANIA in the name
of humanism, causing this government to change its policy toward
the national minorities native to this country. WE ACCUSE THE
CEAUSESCU GOVERNMENT of attempting by brutal force to liquidate
the cultural heritage of all the native nationalities in this
country and to eliminate every citizen who is not of Rumanian
blood. Therefore we ask the above mentioned governments to
SEND INTO ROMANIA A MIXED AND
UNBIASED COMMISSION IN ORDER TO ASSESS THE SITUATION CONCERNING
THE FORCED RUMANIZATION, CULTURAL, RELIGIOUS AND NATIONAL DISCRIMINATION
AND THE DESTRUCTION OF OUR CULTURAL AND NATIONAL IDENTITY. SINCE
THE RUMANIAN GOVERNMENT DOES NOT COMPLY WITH INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS,
WE URGE THOSE GOVERNMENTS WHICH HAVE TREATIES OR ANY KIND OF CONTRACTS
WITH THIS GOVERNMENT TO REEXAMINE ALL CONVENANTS MADE WITH THE
CEAUSESCU REGIME.
It is not so much the hunger and
poverty due to the economic policies of this dictatorship which
is the most unbearable to us, but the brutal treatment and the
daily abasement and humiliation to which we are exposed as inferior
human beings. It is indeed a disgrace that in the last quarter
of the twentieth century we are forced to turn with our scream
for help to the world, but our situation has become so intolerable
and beyond endurance that our only recourse left is the conscience
of the human race.
It is not our aim to commit terrorist
acts. All we want is to be able to live as it is becoming to a
human being. In order to protect our lives and the lives of our
families from the vengeance of this terror regime under which
we are forced to live, we sign as The Leadership of the
Democratic Resistance Movement in Romania called NEPSZABADSAG
Freedom for the People!"
In support of this appeal
the NEPSZABADSAG submitted two weeks later to the same governments
a "factual and documented proof" of their distress.
The following is a condensed version of those facts:
"Due to the extreme cruelties
used by the Rumanian authorities against dissenters, we can not
name the sources of our statistics, because it would endanger
the lives of many people, including many of our Rumanian friends,
and their families. Nevertheless, our facts are correct, and can
be counterchecked by an international commisson seriously embarked
on the purpose of finding out the truth."
"In 1982, according to the
secret files of the SECURITATE, 1343 Hungarians died or disappeared
while in police custody. During the first five months of 1983
in Transylvania alone 31,816 arrests took place for political
reasons."
“Whenever the Western Press
brings the name of someone who was tortured to death by the Rumanian
police, within a few days every member of his family is arrested
here, tortured and dies of "accidental" death or commits
suicide."
"We realize that all this
seems unbelievable to those who live in a decent land. But this
country is different. What makes it different? The very fact that
197,813 members of the former IRON GUARD are today the backbone
of Rumania's Communist Party, and therefore THE PARTY IS DOMINATED
BY RADICAL ULTRANATIONALIST ELEMENTS."
"Besides the open brutality
against all those who use their mother tongue in public places,
the forced Rumanization pursued by this government is aimed at
the total destruction of our ancient Hungarian culture, which
is the native culture of Transylvania. During the last ten years
more than ELEVEN MILLION BOOKS IN THE HUNGARIAN LANGUAGE, CONFISCATED
FROM LIBRARIES, SCHOOLS AND PRIVATE HOMES WERE BURNED AND CULTURAL
MONUMENTS DESTROYED."
"THOUGH ACCORDING TO OUR
RECORDS THE NUMBER OF HUNGARIANS IN THIS COUNTRY IS STILL NEAR
THE THREE MILLION, MOST OF THE HUNGARIAN SCHOOLS ARE CLOSED DOWN
OR TAKEN OVER AND THE USE OF THE HUNGARIAN LANGUAGE IS STRICTLY
FORBIDDEN ON THE SCHOOL GROUNDS."
"Those who officiaily represent
today the national minorities are nominated to this post and paid
by the Ceausescu government. They are carefully selected traitors
and the only ones authorized to speak in the name of the minorities.
Some of them are even sent abroad to tell of the wonderful life
under the Ceausescu regime. Whenever a delegation arrives from
any foreign country with the purpose to examine complaints concerning
the treatment of minorities, these are the socalled 'leaders'
of those minorities who are eager to reassure the visitors that
everything is well."
"All national and religious
minorities in this country are united in seeking redress in our
plight, and at the same time many Rumanian workers sympathize
with our cause, for they are suffering also, if not in the same
degree, from the terroristic policies of the Nationalist£ommunist
Party, which rules our country today."
Signed:
The Democratic Resistance
Movement in Rumania
PETITION
of the Transylvanian World
Federation
Ladies Auxiliary in Cleveland, Ohio
September, 1984
We, the undersigned, are concerned
about the Hungarian native population of Rumania. Over 3 million
Hungarians live in the Transylvanian portion of Rumania, a land
that for almost 1000 years was an integral part of Hungary. These
people are not immigrants nor minorities in this region but part
of the Hungarian majority inhabiting the Carpathian Basin.
The Rumanian government, due to
misguided nationalistic tendencies and prejudices, has constantly
violated the basic human and national rights of these Hungarians.
In light of the tragic situation, we hereby petition our government,
the government of the United States of America, to take action
on behalf of these people.
We ask, as an immediate measure,
that the Trade Agreement with Rumania signed originaily in August
1975 not to be renewed again. We ask this on the grounds that
the Rumanian government is not in compliance with the Helsinki
Final Act. The Trade Agreement cannot override the provisions
of the Helsinki Final Agreement that requires the protection of
human rights, rights that include national and nationality rights
also.
It is well documented that the
Rumanian government has not made any effort to change its policy
of repression against the Hungarian and German populations of
Transylvania.
We believe that through the proper
interpretation and application of the Trade Act, the United States
could better promote its own principles and at the same time do
much to encourage Compliance with the Helsinki Final Agreement
human rights provisions.
We submit our Petition for serious
consideration.
Respectfully,
Mrs. Dora T. Dombrady, President
and 668 signatures.
99ath Congress
1st Session
H. Res. 56
Concerning observance
by the Government of Romania
of the human rights of Hungarians in Transylvania,
especially the right of selfdetermination.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
February 7, 1985
Mr. Dornan of California (for
himself, Mr. Siljander, Mr. Dwyer of New Jersey, Mr. McGrath,
Mr. Annunzio, Mr. Young of Missouri, Mr. Feighan, Mr. Metain,
Mr. Addabbo, and Mr. Burton of Indiana) submitted the following
resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affalis.
RESOLUTION
Concerning observance by the Government
of Romania of the human rights of Hungarians in Transylvania,
especially the right of selfdetermination.
Whereas the Government of Romania
has entered into treaties and accords (including the 1947 Paris
Treaty of Peace with Romania, the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic,
Social, and Cultural Rights, and the 1975 Helsinki Final Act of
the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe) which guarantee
the human rights of its citizens without any discrimination as
to religion and national origin;
Whereas the Constitution of the
Socialist Republic of Romania also ensures farreaching rights
to the "coinhabiting nationalities" in Romania;
Whereas the province of Transylvania,
which has two million five hundred thousand Hungarians and which
had constituted part of Hungary for a millennium, was originally
ceded to Romania by the 1920 Trianon Treaty;
Whereas the fate of the Hungarians
in 'Transylvania has been systematic denationalization under the
various Romanian Governments, whether Royalist, Fascist, or Communist;
Whereas the Government of the
Socialist Republic of Romania and its regional and local authorities
pursue a policy of denationalization toward the Hungarians and
people of other nationalities in Transylvania by measures approximating
ethnocide, including (1) the destruction of Hungarian language
schools and the Hungarian Bolyai University (still in existence
in 1958) and the replacement of these schools by a steadily declining
number of Hungarian sections in Romanian schools, (2) the destruction,
or the making inaccessible to the public and scholars, of the
documents of the Hungarian past of Transylvania, and (3) the conscious
dispersion of the Hungarian intelligentsia into Romanian areas
and the settlement of large number of Romanian colonists into
the Hungarian areas of Transylvania;
Whereas the Socialist Republic
of Romania actively interferes with the internal affairs of all
its religious communities. severely limiting or banning all their
social and teaching activities and discriminates against their
members in employment, education, and promotion, particularly
with regard to the members of the Catholic and Protestant churches
which are composed of Hungarians and Germans; and
Whereas the two million five hundred
thousand Hungarians in Transylvania are entitled to selfdetermination,
a right protected under the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference
on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved,
That the House of Representatives
(1) deplores the activities of
the Government of the Socialist Republic of Romania denying the
rights of the Hungarians and people of other nationalities in
Transylvania; and
(2) requests the President and
the Secretary of State to discuss the issues of human rights of
the Hungarians in Transylvania, including the right of national
selfdetermination, with the Government of the Socialist
Republic of Romania and with other appropriate governments.
An Open Letter
to the Delegates to the
World Conference on Human Rights in Ottawa
May, 1985
Distinguished Delegate:
On the opening of the conference
on human rights we turn toward you who will bring important decisions
concerning the most important rights of human beings: to live
in freedom and with human dignity.
During the conference many cases
may be presented where these precious rights have been violated;
i.e., instances involving arrest without warrant, imprisonment
without trial, conviction on trumpedup charges, or the use
of torture to extract false convictions, to name but a few.
But our main purpose of writing
to you is to call your attention to another type of human rights
violation, the willful and systematic oppression of national minorities,
in some countries with mixed population. The only "sin"
of these people is that they are of different nationality than
the majority, i.e. they have different motherlanguage, different
culture, different aspirations and even different religion. These
millions want to keep their national identity as strongly as you
want to keep your own to which you and they are fully entitled
by natural, codified or uncodified, law.
We have mainly in mind the treatment
of Hungarians just outside the present border of Hungary, inside
Rumania, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Together,
they number approximately four million people, being the largest
national minority in Europe outside the Soviet Union. The territories
referred to belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary for a thousand
years until it was split up and distributed among these countries
in the peace treaty of Trianon concluding World War I for Hungary
with 8,250,000 Hungarian population. (Slovakia ceded its
eastern part to the Soviet Union in 1945.)
Not much is known about the 200,000
Hungarian population of this new part of the Soviet Union. Due
to the multinational structure of Yugoslavia, the half a million
Hungarians living in that country are not so much discriminated
against as the 2.5 million Hungarian population of Transylvania
(Rumania) and the 700,000 in Czechoslovakia.
The Czechoslovak leadership seems
to suffer in a nationalistic fervor for a long time. To satisfy
itself it had led a systematic offensive against Hungarians in
Slovakia which resulted in the postwar years in depriving
Hungarians from the Czechoslovakian citizenship, closing their
schools for a few years (so that the Hungarian youth has not had
any education during those years) and wanting to expell all Hungarians
from Slovakia in order to have a pure Slavic country including
Czechs, Slovaks and Ukrainians only. In recent years Slovak nationalism
flared up again threatening anew with the closing of all Hungarian
schools. With this and the imprisonment of Miklos Duray, a young
Hungarian geologist living in Slovakia, that country got in the
forefront of human rights violations in EastCentral Europe.
Duray who organized a campaign against the closing of the Hungarian
schools in Slovakia, was incarcerated last summer and kept in
prison since without trial. Charges against him as far as it can
be known are the usual in socialist countries: "activities
contrary to the interest of the state."
Mr. Ceausescu, president of the
Socialist Republic of Rumania, repeatedly and publicly asserted
that Rumania is a unitary, onenation state. These statements
seem to govern Rumania's minority policies which more and more
curtail educational and cultural opportunities for the nationalities
with the obvious tendency of assimilating them as fast as possible.
Of course, Rumania is not a onenation state. On the contrary,
next to Yugoslavia, Rumania is the second most multinational country
in the area. It is populated by an estimated 2.5 million Hungarians,
450,000 Germans and several hundredthousand Jews, Gypsies,
Serbs, Bulgarians, Ukrainians and others, besides Rumanians. That
is why Rumania applies all means available for a totalitarian
government to forcibly absorb the nonRumanian nationalities
into the Rumanian ethnic body. Some of the ways used so far are:
*Closing of all Hungarian high
schools and drastically reducing the number of elementary schools.
The last Hungarian high school under the process of Rumanianization
is the Roman Catholic founded, 400 year old high school in Kolozsvar
(In Rumanian: NapocaCluj). The BabesBolyai University
in the same city (previously the Hungarian cultural capital of
Trans ylvania) has now an ever decreasing small department mainly
for the Hungarian literature classes in spite of the Rumanian
pledge, at the forcible merging of the Hungarian Bolyat and the
Rumanian Babes universities in 1958, to maintain two equally strong
Rumanian and Hungarian departments.
*Squeezing out the Hungarian
language from all public use although constitutional assurance
to the contrary. Hungarian language cannot be used at railway
and bus depots, at law courts, at community authorities' offices,
in hotels and restaurants. The suppression of language went so
far as to compel Hungarian doctors to speak Rumanian to their
Hungarian patients.
*Complete control upon religious
denominations. If a priest or minister is very popular in the
congregation, and keeps the church members together and active
in an exemplary manner, he can count on a transfer, or discharge
and even arrest The number of theology students and seminarians
has been radically decreased in the last few years covering not
more than 10% of vacant congregations by retirement and death.
Studying abroad, a 400 year old Hungarian Protestant tradition,
has become practically forbidden.
*The Hungarian character of
certain regions of Transylvania, including the Szekely Land, is
being destroyed by forced mass resettlements of Rumanians from
the original Rumanian provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia into
Transylvania Cities with overwhelmingly Hungarian population in
the past, are now overwhelmingly Rumanian by resettlements of
Rumanians and not permitting Hungarians to move in cities.
*Hungarian consciousness has
been continuously attacked by disseminating government propaganda
about the history of Transylvania which radically augments the
minor Rumanian contributions to culture and science and belittle
Hungarian and German ones which had been the major cultural accomplishment
of the area. Distorting history by practically eliminating the
one thousand year Hungarian past of Transylvania and replacing
it with a few years of Rumanian occupation not only insults all
Hungarians in Rumania, but also degrades
Rumanian historiography.
AntiHungarian teachings
in schools, and publications of antiHungarian books supported
or even encouraged by the Rumanian government occurs in a crass
repudiation and violation of the Rumanian constitution which forbids
any expression of chauvinism. Hungarians who complain against
these insults of their nation are punished, Rumanian perpetrators
of nationalistic agitation, go free.
*House searches, confiscation
of Hungarian books, arrests, police brutality, beatings, torture
causing even death, imprisonment without court order or judgement
is the fate of many Hungarians in Transylvania whose only "crime"
is to be Hungarian. A partial list of these unfortunate people
which is included in one of the HungarianAmerican memoranda
to the conference, serves just as a reminder that violating of
the most elemental human rights to be free, is the essence of
governing in Rumania.
Distinguished Delegate! Hungarians
in Rumania and Czechoslovakia have lived in the last two decades
under a steadily increasing governmental pressure to be eliminated
as a nation by forcible assimilation into the Rumanian and Czechoslovakian
majorities. If the civilized world does not stop the denationalization
process of over three million Hungarians in both countries, it
does not compel their governments to reopen Hungarian schools
on all three levels of education, a new generation of Hungarian
youth will be growing up which will not be able to master his
or her own mothertongue and a large part of the nation will cease
to exist as Hungarian in the not too distant future.
As the undernourished, hungry
people of the world must have ardently wished that the World Conference
on Hunger a few years ago would stop their hunger, so wish the
suppressed people, the nonRumanian and nonSlovak inhabitants
of Rumania and Czechoslovakia that the World Conference on Human
Rights in Ottawa, be the turning point for the better in their
hopeless life as a national minority. They ask for your concerted
efforts to demand respecting their human rights, the freedom of
promoting their own culture, teaching their children in their
Hungarian schools in their own mothertongue, freely using their
motherlanguage in public, freedom of organizing themselves and
protecting their national interests and being free to preserve
their national identity and as well as the national regions as
autonomous territories.
May God give you the insight,
understanding and strength to recognize the problem of national
minorities and act upon it will full resolution for significant
improvement of their precarious fate now and in the future.
God bless you for your
efforts in that direction.
Respectfully yours,
Louis L. Lote
President
Committee of Transylvania, Inc.
P.S. All radio and television
broadcasts in
Hungarian language are now discontinued
in Rumania.
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