The Hungarian-Romanian Conflicts
When Austria-Hungary lost World War I, the 1920 Treaty of
Trianon awarded Transylvania to Romania. With this step Transylvania's 2 million
Hungarians were placed under Romanian rule.
The following era was one when the rights of Hungarians living in Transylvania
have been consistently violated. The Romanians attempted to deny Hungarians local
autonomy, as well as their financial resources. Confiscation of property owned by
Hungarians not only included houses, fields, forests, and meadows, but even churches. Cultural treasures were destroyed, and several persons displaying the Hungarian national values, even in folk art, were imprisoned. In an attempt to falsify the history of the region, the Romanians changed historic Hungarian place names, and removed historic statues belonging to Hungarians.
In 1940, The Second Vienna Award returned Northern Transylvania and the Szekely
region to Hungary. The Vienna Award returned 2.5 million people to Hungary, from
which 1 million Romanians. After the conclusion of World War II, Stalin ordered
that Northern Transylvania and the Szekely region should be returned to Romania, as
he thought that communism could be more easily imposed on Romania than on Hungary.
After the communist takeover, the situation of the Hungarians did not change.
Immediately after the war, the communist authorities began a land redistribution in
which 80% of the land owned by Hungarians was redistributed to Romanians.
The education has also suffered as Hungarian schools were closed, and the Bolyai
University was merged with the Romanian Babes University in 1959.
Restrictions on language use have manifested themselves many different ways:
bilingual signs, as well as the use of the Hungarian language in public were forbidden.
Hungarian newspapers, scholarly journals, and other publications were censored and
sometimes shut down.
As far as the regions cultural artifacts were concerned, a concerted effort was
made to destroy anything that was of Hungarian origin. This included the confiscation
of museums, libraries, archives, and churches.
In 1989, the Hungarians of Transylvania were the ones that triggered the revolt
that overthrew Ceausescu, and communism. Although the worst excesses of the Ceausescu
regime have ended, the events of 1989 did not end anti-Hungarian policies that have
always existed since Romania annexed Transylvania in 1920. Harassment by Romanian
extremists still continues. The Hungarians in Transylvania have now formed The
Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (DAHR). Romanian politics are currently
dominated by President Ion Illiescu, and other extreme Romanian nationalists like
Gheorghe Funar and Corneliu Vadim Tudor.
The policy of the Romanian state towards ethnic Hungarians has remained unchanged. Unfortunately, not even the fall of communism has not improved the Human Rights
condition for the Hungarians of Transylvania.
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