Another outrageous anti-Hungarian outburst was heard in the Romanian Parliament. This time, AUR MP Dan Tanasă attacked the linguistic rights of the Hungarian community in Romania, speaking during the plenary session of Parliament in a tone unworthy not only of the legislature of a European Union member state, but of any democratic public life.
The debate concerned a legislative amendment submitted by the RMDSZ, aimed at preserving language-use rights previously guaranteed to national minorities even if, according to the results of a later census, the proportion of the community were to fall below the threshold established by law. In essence, this legislative initiative seeks to ensure the continued linguistic rights of Hungarians living in dispersed communities, based on the principle that a community should not be deprived overnight of a linguistic right it has already acquired.
Dan Tanasă, the notorious AUR MP who has essentially built his political career on anti-Hungarian activism, saw the discussion of the linguistic rights of dispersed communities as an opportunity to attack the Hungarians of Székely Land. Beyond the political content characteristic of him, we find it particularly alarming that this time the MP also mocked the Hungarian language and, moreover, imitated the way Hungarian MPs speak in a mocking and belittling manner, using stereotypes. We consider this completely unacceptable.
Our organisation once again draws attention to the fact that AUR’s anti-Hungarian activism and rhetoric is constantly evident, and also to the fact that Romanian political and public discourse completely ignores such outbursts by AUR MPs, despite the fact that Dan Tanasă’s activities are widely known and his exclusionary and inflammatory rhetoric has become commonplace not only in the public media, but also in one of the country’s most important political forums, Parliament itself. It would be particularly important for Romanian public figures to speak out against Tanasă and to stress that this kind of behaviour is unacceptable.
We consider particularly cynical Tanasă’s distortion whereby he attacks the use of the Hungarian language under the pretext of defending the Romanian language. The Hungarian community merely wants the state to guarantee the continuity of those linguistic rights for dispersed Hungarian communities that the state itself has granted them. In our view, Parliament should make laws rather than participate at constructing narratives of political hostility towards vulnerable communituies.
The Mikó Imre Legal Rights Protection Service therefore rejects in the strongest possible terms Dan Tanasă’s latest anti-Hungarian outburst and considers it unacceptable that, in the Romanian Parliament, an elected representative should speak in such a tone about the linguistic rights of an indigenous national community.
Commenting on what happened, Erika Benkő, head of the Mikó Imre Legal Rights Protection Service, stated: “Dan Tanasă and his political activities are unfortunately very well known to us. It is truly regrettable, and says a great deal about the political atmosphere and circumstances in Romania, that someone can build a career on anti-Hungarian activism, on devoting his life to the removal of Hungarian inscriptions and Hungarian symbols, and on regularly launching attacks against the Hungarian community and the Hungarian language. This is a damning indictment of Romanian public life and its quality. At the same time, his mockery of the Hungarian language was something of a novelty for us. With this, Tanasă has ventured onto the same treacherous ground as President Iohannis once did, whose ‘jonopotkívánok pészédé’ became so indelibly associated with him that he was never able to shake it off. The time will come when Tanasă’s political past will also become relevant for him, particularly at the European level, just as it did for Iohannis.”
Photo: Facebook/Dan Tanasă)