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.
Hungarian pupils severely discriminated at the English language contest
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.
The lack of bilingual inscriptions: not regarded as discrimination
The High Court of Cassation and Justice, Romania’s supreme court, in a final judgement annulled a decision of the National Council for Combating Discrimination (CNCD) from 2014. The decision in question was a milestone as far as minority rights protection is concerned, since it stated that the lack of bilingual street name signs in Târgu Mureș/Marosvásárhely constitutes discrimination and suggested that the Mayor’s Office placed the street name signs in two languages: Romanian and Hungarian. As a reaction to this, the Mayor’s Office brought the CNCD and the NGO that put up the bilingual street signs to court, asking for the Council’s decision to be annulled.
Romanian football hooligans beating up Hungarian fans at a peaceful family picnic
At an amateur football championship organised in Cluj-Napoca/Kolozsvár the past weekend, supporters of the Universitatea Cluj football team violently beat the Hungarian fans of CFR 1907 and fans of Videoton and FTC, guest teams from Hungary, in the presence of their families.
Romanian journalist mourns over the extension of linguistic rights
A Romanian journalist, Rareș BOGDAN, one of the protagonists of the recent anti-Hungarian discourse in Romania, the presenter of a television programme on Realitatea TV entitled Jocuri de Putere, has yet again provoked his followers with a nationalistic Facebook post. He complains about the fact that a legislative proposal meant to reduce the threshold above which minorities have the right to use their mother tongue in the public administration from 20% to 10%, has already passed through two committees in the Chamber of Deputies.