A Minority Under Attack: The Hungarians of Transylvania [antikvár]

A MINORITY UNDER ATTACK: THE HUNGARIANS OF TRANSYLVANIAbyPÁL BODORE^ very commoner in Rumania is a second-class citizen. The members of national minorities are third-class. If classification in terms of human rights is at all possible, one could speak of discrimination within a total absence of rights.The difference between Rumanians and non-Rumanians is the difference between bad and still worse.Of course, the oppressed are hardly made happy by the knowledge that some are still more severely oppressed. He who is comforted by the thought that his next-door neighbour is still more devoid of rights, will never be free either. Being a prisoner, he is a gaoler.This is why an approach to human rights in Rumania from the angle of minority rights gives an inaccurate, distorted picture. A discussion concentrating on Hungarian or minority grievances circumvents or even covers up unwittingly the general state of deprivation of rights, i. e. the grievances of the entire population, members of the majority nation included. A purely general approach, however, closes its eyes to the particular minority tragedy, takes no notice of the discrimination of national minorities.Exclusively minority optics cannot see or show the whole. The same is true of a viewpoint that conceals the doubly handicapped situation of the minorities.All this can easily be illustrated by a single example, rural development in Rumania. As appears from the world press, the accelerated implementation of a plan conceived long ago, proclaimed by a presidential address in March 1988, unless hindered by international protest and the lack of funds, envisaged the liquidation of about seven thousand villages.There were some who were shocked only by the consequences for the minorities and interpreted the plan as merely a means of forced assimilation, ^nd there were others who considered the affair in an abstract way, and were