Southeast Europe

1.3 Defence of identity and/or of language and/or of religion
The Hungarian minority in Romania has managed to maintain a distinct identity despite
the policies enforced prior to 1989. The recent debate concerning education, and
specifically the establishment of a Hungarian-language university in Romania, shows
the depth of feeling among the Hungarian community regarding the preservation of their
language.
During the Communist regime, and particularly under Ceauşescu, there was little or no
dissent in the practical sense (Fowkes, 1995:114). The majority of Hungarians arrested
for anti-regime protests were driven by their concern for the decline in Hungarianlanguage
education in Romania (Deletant, 1998:180). In 1977, two ethnic Hungarians
prepared memoranda on the subject. The report of one of these authors, Takács László,
obtained added weight, both due to his position in the Romanian Communist Party and
the fact that he refused to hide behind a pseudonym when the report was published. In
1959, the Bolyai University in Cluj, a Hungarian establishment, was “merged” with the
Romanian Babeş University. Takács was a former rector of the university and
ironically, by 1959, his connections with the party made him part of the band that
orchestrated the merger. Takács’s memorandum pointed out the steady reduction in
Hungarian-language schooling, including the disturbing statistic that of the 34,738
ethnic Hungarian students attending secondary schools nation-wide, 15,591, or 45%,
were attending technical secondary schools where teaching was offered exclusively in
Romanian (Deletant, 1998:181).
Amnesty International documented several cases of ethnic Hungarians being imprisoned
during the 1980s because they whad protested discrimination against the Hungarian
minority. The organisation reported that researchers had heard about the harassment and
sometimes imprisonment of ethnic Hungarians who had protested non-violently about
alleged abuses of Hungarians rights in Romania (Amnesty International, 1987:13).
March 1990 saw inter-ethnic violence in the Transylvanian town of Targu Mureş.
Growing Hungarian demands for the re-establishment of Hungarian-language schools in
addition to a commemoration of the 1848 revolution, during which Hungarian flags
were displayed, met with antagonism from the Romanian population. On March 19 and
20, this erupted into violence in which five people died and a large number were
injured, some seriously (Helsinki Watch, May 1990:1-2). Since then, there have been
no further instances of inter-ethnic violence involving Hungarians.
The Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (DAHR) was established on 29
December 1989, and registered as an organisation. According to the Law 68 from June
1992 national minority NGOs are entitled to participate in the election and to have a
representative in the Chamber of Deputies of the Romania parliament. It was founded to
represent the interests of the Hungarian minority in Romania. Its membership is formed
of territorial organisations, platforms and associated members in accordance with the
principle of internal pluralism. Associated members are social, scientific, cultural, and
other professional groups (DAHR web page). DAHR has been acting on behalf of the
Hungarian minority ever since the beginning. During the six years preceding the
inclusion of the party in the Romanian government following the 1996 elections,
Romanian authorities implied that the DAHR was not the sole representative of the
Hungarian minority. Examination of voting statistics proves this untrue, as the party
consistently won all the votes of the Hungarian electorate in Romania (Weber,
20