On Monday, the 9th of April, football players and spectators once again witnessed an alarming demonstration of anti-Hungarian sentiment on a football match between ASC Juventus Bucuresti and Sepsi OSK. During the warm-up, a parody of the song “Lord, protect the Romanians” resounded from the loudspeakers on the Anghel Iordanescu Stadium in Bucharest. Several words from the original song’s lyrics were replaced by vulgar and xenophobic expressions, moreover, the lyrics clearly incited to violence against the Hungarian community.
Council of Europe Report: The official usage of minority languages should be broadened in Romania
The most recent report on Romania by the Council of Europe, meant to review Romania’s fulfilment of the commitments taken by ratifying the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, has been published last week, and assesses the situation of minority languages in Romania, including Hungarian, which is the most widely spoken language in the country after Romanian.
In general, the report welcomes the positive measures taken by the Romanian state since the last reporting cycle, but stresses that there is still a lot to be done, since many of the relevant undertakings have only partially or formally been implemented. The report stresses the need for further action, especially concerning the use of minority languages in judicial proceedings, in relations with administrative authorities and public services, as well as in the field of healthcare and consumer rights.
Regarding the judicial system, the Committee of Experts underlines the “need for the Romanian authorities to encourage minority language speakers to more widely use their languages in judicial proceedings”, both in speech and in writing. In order to achieve this, they recommend – among other things – “the use of interpretation and translations”, in a way that does not incur additional expenses for citizens.
Concerning administrative authorities and public services, the Committee stresses the need to “extend the number of widely-used administrative texts and forms for the population in Hungarian”, while also encouraging the publication of all official documents in Hungarian. In certain domains, like street names, or public transport and tourist signs, the report encourages the use of traditional names in Hungarian in the relevant municipalities. However, the wording of the Report is rather vague, since it fails to specify what it means by “relevant municipality”.
Unfounded accusations against a Hungarian local representative
Sándor TAMÁS, the president of the Covasna County Council is being prosecuted for “publicly supporting war crimes and crimes committed against humanity, as well as publicly proclaiming legionary and demagogic ideas”. The denouncement was made by Mircea DIACON, the head of the Covasna County Commissariat for Consumer Protection, who has taken every opportunity in recent years to undermine the interests of local Hungarian businesses and events.
Hungarian pupils severely discriminated at the English language contest
In the past few weeks Hungarian teachers and educational experts alike have been outraged over a recently modified regulation, which states that starting this year the English language contest organised by the Ministry of Education will also test translation competences. The regulation specifies that texts in English can be translated exclusively to and from Romanian. This is unconstitutional, as well as extremely discriminatory towards pupils belonging to national minorities, whose mother tongue is not Romanian. This means that these students will face the added difficulty of having to translate English into another language and viceversa, none of which is their mother tongue.
Romania’s Prime Minister threatens to hang Hungarians
Mihai TUDOSE, Romania’s Prime Minister threatened to hang those Hungarians from Transylvania, who hoist the Szekler flag, the unofficial regional symbol of three Romanian counties.
The Prime Minister said this after the presidents of the three Hungarian parties from Transylvania signed a joint statement regarding autonomy. The declaration adopted in Cluj-Napoca/Kolozsvár by UDMR/RMDSZ, PCM/MPP and PPMT/EMNP briefly enumerates the principles meant to clarify their common stance on the various notions of autonomy. The Romanian politicians and public figures reacting to this story completely rejected the idea, saying that it is unacceptable and unconstitutional to speak about autonomy in Romania.