The Guardian of Liberty - Nemzetőr, 1987 (10. évfolyam, 2-6. szám)

1987-03-01 / 2. szám

ROMANIA Genocide of Hungarian Culture Continues D isturbing reports that the genocide of Hungarian culture in Romania is proceed­ing apace continue to reach Western Europe, and even to evoke unfavourable comment from the authorities in Hungary. On a purely material plane, local authorities are reported to have been officially instructed SANDINISTAS ACCUSED OF SCORCHED-EARTH TACTICS (Continued from page 1) was reporting on attempted arson, murder threats and assault.” Luis Maran Sanchez, the former President of La Prensa’s journalists’ Union and a Social Demo­crat activist, has been imprisoned twice in the last two years. The second time he was locked in a cell with a gang that brutally beat him for 15 days. After an international appeal he was released from prison, with broken nose and missing .teeth. D uring the Sandinist era there has been a dramatic increase in the number of political prisoners in Nicaragua. According to the CPDH, Somoza held about 600 political prisoners; under the Sandinistas that figure has risen to 9,500. In a recent interview with American journalists, Interior Minister Borge admitted that over half had been sentenced by “political courts” and were therefore deprived of legal assistance or any other sort of aid during investigatory custody. The number of cases euphemistically described as “disappeared” is around 400, according to the CPDH. It is widely believed that this figure is much higher, as fear of State intimidation often deters people from inquiring about missing friends and relatives. Many prisoners seized for political offenses are held on spurious criminal charges. So-called “of­fences against the State” include: selling grain on the open market, refusing to join the militia, selling food on prohibited days, refusing to con­duct neighbourhood vigilance and presenting legal defence for political detainees. Conditions in Sandinist prisons are harsh and degrading. Inmates of Managua’s El Chipote jail are generally held incommunicado in dark, subter­ranean cells. Many cells are severely cramped, some no more than a metre square, which makes it impossible for prisoners to lie down. Sanitation facilities consist of a water tap that runs briefly each day, and a floor hole that serves as the toilet and drain. Quinta Ye, the provincial State Security jail in Chinandega, is even worse. Javier Altamirano Perez, a 32-year-old CUS labour leader, who has been repeatedly in Quinta Ye, said on one oc­casion that he was confined in a covered hole in the ground for 27 days. He had a tube to the surface for air and a wooden shelf for a bed. Torture is often used in Sandinist prisons. Physical torture is frequently reserved for pea­sant rather than middle-class prisoners, as peasants are unlikely to be protected by influential families or by the posiblitiy of revelation of their suf­fering to the international media. The tortures include hanging by the hands, attacks by trained dogs, and placement in nedk-deep sewage pits or in barrels of cold water for long periods, to erase all notices and inscriptions in the Hun­garian language from public buildings — schools, libraries, and churches. One member of an “ideological brigade”, Ion Baiesu, on a visit to Cluj-Napoca (Kolozsvár) is reported to have asked what was the point of a notice “in an incomprehensible language” in the porch of the Matyas (Matthias) church there. In addition, Hungarian schools are being given Roma­nian names. Offically-inspired vandalism against Hungarian inscriptions, which began in earnest in 1984, is part of a general campaign against Hungarian culture in Romania which has been going on for much longer. Plans arc reported to be in train to wind up the Elungarian theatre at Sfîntu Gheorghc (Sepsiszentgyörgy) in the land of the Szekelys north of Brasov (Brassó) in central Romania, in south-eastern Transylvania. The theatre might, as an intermediate stage, be amalgamated with the theatre at Brasov, of which it would become a brandi instead of an independent institution. This is the principle on which the Hungarian Bolyai University at Kolozs­vár, named after two famous Hngarian Transyl­vanian mathematicians, father and son, was amalgamated with the Romanian Babes University in 1959. Alternatively the authorities may simply turn the Sfîntu Gheorghe theatre into an independent Romanian theatre. Already Romanians have been put to work there, in accordance with the general policy of diluting the Hungarian population in the areas where it was formerly concentrated — Western Romania, the area round Kolozsvár, and the Szekely land. Indeed, attractive financial inducements (between 15,000 and 30,000 lei = 3,600 dollars and 7,200 dollars at the official rate) are reported to have been offered by the Romanian State to encourage volunteers to settle in the Hungarian areas. The effect this official campaign can have on people’s lives is illustrated by the suicide of a 25-year-old schoolmistress, Julia Kcrestély, who taught biology in a school near Arad, in south­western Romania. She was fully qualified and succeeded a teacher who did not have the proper qualifications, but was the wife of an official in the Securitate, the secret police. The Securitate therefore set out to make Julia Kerestély’s position unbearable, to make her leave the district. The authorities for instance forbade her to speak any Hungarian in the school. When she took her own life, her family was told, under threat of severe penalties, to say nothing about her death to anyone. No announce­ment of her death was allowed to appear in the local paper before the funeral. Twice recently a senior member of the Hun­­garin party leadership, Politburo member and Central Committee Secretary Matyas Szűrös, has publicly complained about the treatment of the Hungarians in Romania. On both occasions, a radio phone-in on February 9 and an article in the Party monthly Pártélet (Party life) in March, he contrasted the situation of the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia favourably with that in Romania, saying that it was possible to discuss the matter with the Czcheo­­slovak authorities, but not with the Romanian. As readers of this journal will know, the treat­ment of the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia leaves much to be desired, as the case of Dr. Miklós Duray has illustrated. B y contrast, the treatment of the much smaller Hungarian minority in Yugoslavia gives no cause for complaint. For instance, a standard edition of the complete poems of Endre Ady (1877—1919) has been published in Novi Sad (Újvidék). Ady’s birthplace, now in Romania, was renamed after him but this was an empty' gesture; the statement by the official “Council of the Working People of Hungarian Nationality in Romania", in its Resolution after its Plenum on February 26—27, that “liberty and the material conditions for the development of literature and art are guaranteed” the Hungarians in Romania has been false for at least 25 years. This “Resolution”, which fills four columns in the Romanian party newspaper Scinteia (The Spark) on March 4, is a typical encomium on President Ceausescu, his wife, and all his works; there is a similar three-column Resolution by the corresponding organ of the German minority. The “Hungarian Working People” resolution denounces indignantly articles on Transylvania and the minority question which have appeared in Hungary, and the raising of the question at the CSCE (Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe) review conference in Vienna. The Romanian “working people of Hungarian national­ity” are made to describe the official Hungarian stand as “reactionary and reminiscent of attitudes of the Horthy Fascist regime.” However, nobody believes either what this reso­lution says or that it was not written under duress. Indeed, it was a waste of the Romanian authorities’ time to produce it. It was a Romanian, a retired Party official from Cluj, who recently submitted an article to the writers’ weekly Lucea­­farul (Evening Star) in which he said that the denunciation of Horthy was just an excuse for the campaign against Hungary and the Hungarians. His article was not published. Self-styled “Führer”, Ceausescu, Dictator of Romania MARCH-APRIL, 1987

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