Hungarian Minorities In Central-Europe Essay, Research Paper
Since the 17th and 18th centuries, the Carpathian Basin has become one of the most diverse and conflict-ridden macroregions of Europe from both an ethnic and religious perspective. After the fall of the communism the newly emerged democratic states had to face the problem of the minorities. National minorities reacted in a self-defensive way, by reorganising and establishing their cultural and political organisations and parties. This established the core for both ethnic tensions and inter-state conflicts. In the Carpathian-Basin one of the largest minority is Hungarian. The Hungarian minorities appeared in East-Central Europe with one sudden blow. The Peace Treaty of Trianon (1920) caused more then two-third of the Hungarian nation to live in a minority as foreigners. Today there is an estimated 14 million ethnic Hungarians living in the Carpathian-Basin, about 3 million live outside the present borders (after 1920 June 4) of Hungary. This minority situation of the Hungarians arose partly due to economic backwardness of the country in the late 19th century, but in much greater measure the above mentioned peace treaty of Trianon. By the mid 19th century the Hungarian Empire included the entire Czechoslovakia, Serb-Croat Kingdom, a large part of Poland and Romania. After the conciliation/compromise of 1867 these nations together with Austria formed the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It has to be said that the ethnic Hungarians were hardly a majority in this new empire, in the year 1910 only 54% of the empires population was Hungarian. 1914 is the year when the most influential War of our history broke out. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, slightly influenced by the German government, entered the war as an axis power. In four years the axis powers lost the First World War. The treaty of Trianon executed the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the First World War in 1920. As a result of unfair and unnegotiable peace talks , Hungary lost 72 % of its territory and almost 60% of its population. The Treaty was enforced on Hungary as any sort of communication or negotiation between the allies, however the Hungarians were excluded from taking part of the negotiations estabilishing in Trianon. As a result new countries emerged from the Empire, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania were the countries containing most of the ethnic Hungarian groups. This decision of Trianon was and still is a source of national sorrow for Hungarians. This sorrow was only strengthened by the ignorant communist era. For most of the Communist period, the Hungarian government did not raise the minority issue with its socialist neighbours. The issue started to get publicity at the very end of the 70 s; these mainly statistical articles clearly showed the oppression of Hungarians living outside Hungary. Them, during the 80 s as the Ceausescu regime in Romania, further limited the human rights and citizen-rights of the minorities, the Kadar government began to assert cautiously its rights to take an interest in ethnic Hungarians beyond its state borders. In this paper I will discuss the problems of Hungarian minorities in the Carpathian Basin, reflect on the policies on Hungarian minorities in Slovakia and Romania up untill 1997, furthermore I will try to come up with a possible solution or government policy for the Hungarian government. Despite the fact that there is significant Hungarian population in the neighbouring countries, I will not describe the position of Hungarian minorities in Austria, Serbia and The Ukraine, as the policy of these governments do not limit the rights of Hungarians to an extend that it disturbs the international experts on the field, nor the Government Office for Hungarian Minorities Abroad.1. The Case of SlovakiaIntroductionOn 1 January 1993, the ethnic Hungarian minority in Felvidek, as Hungarians call the area to the north of modern-day Hungary, suddenly found it had tripled in relative size. From comprising around 3.8 % of the population of Czechoslovakia, ethnic Hungarians became a minority of over 10 % in the newly-founded state of Slovakia. Almost all ethnic Hungarians in Czechoslovakia were concentrated in Slovakia, mainly in an east-west strip of territory along the Hungarian border. There are generally reckoned to be around 600,000 ethnic Hungarians in Slovakia; the 1991 census gives a total of 567,296 . Around 200,000 ethnic Hungarians were deported from Czechoslovakia in 1945, under the Benes Decrees which expelled suspected collaborators of the war-time Nazi regime on the basis of collective ethnic guilt. Some of those expelled are now trying to obtain a formal apology and compensation, although, as in the case of the far larger group of Sudeten Germans expelled from Czechoslovakia at the same time, they have so far had no success. Ethnic Hungarians in Communist Czechoslovakia had enjoyed some minority rights, particularly in education, where a system of Hungarian-language schools was maintained, and a cultural organization, Csehszlovakiai Magyarok Demokratikus Szovetsege (CSEMADOK – Democratic Federation of Czechoslovak Hungarians), allowed for a limited exchange of views. However, the advantages of post-Communist openness, which brought an immediate improvement in contacts with Hungarians outside Slovakia, and specifically in Hungary itself, did not translate into longer-term improvements in minority rights at home. This was principally due to an increase in Slovak nationalism, which with the coming of democracy had an equal chance to thrive, and the role of three times Slovak Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar. For all but six months of its three-and-a-half years of independence, Slovakia has been governed by Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar. He had first led a government in 1990, after elections contested by interest groups as much as formal political parties. At the June 1992 elections, which were shortly followed by the decision to divide Czechoslovakia, his Hnuti Za Democraticke Slovensko (HZDS – Movement For A Democratic Slovakia) won half of the seats in parliament. He remained in power until March 1994, when defections from his party cost him his majority. New elections were held in October 1994, after which he returned to the Prime Minister’s office as the head of a three-party coalition. Support for Prime Minister Meciar tends to come from older rural voters in the centre of Slovakia, and industrial workers at factories which have become uneconomic and would be likely to close down if rigorous free-market principles were applied. His policies have therefore been to slow down privatization and other economic changes. He has also staked his political reputation on the ideal of the new Slovak nation, with an ethnically Slovak definition. His two coalition partners reflect these two trends. Zdruzenie Robotnikov Slovenska (ZRS – The Association of Slovak Workers) is a hard-line socialist grouping, and Slovenska Narodna Strana (SNS – The Slovak National Party), whose leader Jan Slota is mayor of Zilina in central Slovakia, is an extreme-nationalist party, given to anti-Hungarian rhetoric. The fact that in 1993 Slovakia’s ethnic Hungarians became a far larger minority than they had been in Czechoslovakia made it easier for Slovak nationalists, who were by now in the ascendancy, to focus on them. Instead of gaining strength through relative numbers, the ethnic Hungarians simply became a much larger target.The Road to a Basic TreatyFollowing the elections of September 1994, Vladimir Meciar’s HZDS was once again the main political party, although with too few seats to form a government, even with support from the nationalist SNS. It was two months before the three-party coalition including the ZRS was formed, a period which only emphasised the low political status of the 17 ethnic Hungarian deputies. There are three ethnic Hungarian parties: Egyutteles (Coexistence), led by Miklos Duray; Magyar Keresztenydemokrata Mozgalom (MKM, Hungarian Christian-Democratic Movement), and Magyar Polgari Part (MPP, Hungarian Civic Party). Between them, they have slightly increased their share of the vote over the course of the three post-Communist elections in Slovakia, to just over 10 % in 1994, more or less exactly matching their percentage share of the total population. Duray not surprisingly committed his coalition to work in the opposition- it is in any case highly unlikely that Prime Minister Meciar would have worked with the ethnic Hungarians. At the same time, Slovak President Michal Kovac, a more moderate voice among the Slovak hierarchy who had sought to promote inter-ethnic dialogue at the time of the Komarno Declaration , gave a speech at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. He said that any collective interpretation of minority rights would unbalance the state, adding that Slovakia supported individual rights but expected loyal behaviour from members of the national minority. Michal Kovac had been a former Vladimir Meciar ally, and a member of HZDS before he was appointed to the presidency, but had become a political enemy since the HZDS dismissal from government in March 1994.Vladimir Meciar blamed President Kovac for his defeat at that time, arguing without firm evidence that the President had acted unconstitutionally and put pressure on other parties to remove HZDS from power. So from the ethnic Hungarian point of view, President Kovac might have been expected to provide a counter-balance to the government’s unsympathetic position on minority rights, but in Strasbourg he made it clear he would maintain the Slovak Government line. This was in essence the same line as that pursued in Romania, where the Government also maintained a policy of individual, rather than collective, rights. In December 1994, with a new Slovak Government in place, bi-lateral talks with Hungary resumed on the basic treaty. Apart from the minority issue, there was also the matter of the Gabcikovo-Nagymaros dam project on the River Danube, begun during the Communist era and then unilaterally abandoned by Hungary. The matter had been sent to the International Court of Justice at The Hague for arbitration, where a judgement is still pending, but the Slovaks still saw the dispute as a point of leverage in the treaty negotiations. Between January and March 1995, with an OSCE conference to sign a Stability Pact on good relations in Central and Eastern Europe scheduled for 21 March in Paris, there was almost no movement in the two sides’ positions on the treaty. In early March, the Hungarian side said there was no real willingness for agreement from the Slovaks. A week later, Slovak Prime Minister Meciar blamed the Hungarians, saying that Hungarian demands for local autonomy and their insistence on “giving more rights than is usual” to minorities were holding up the treaty. Finally, after a last-minute meeting between Prime Ministers Vladimir Meciar and Gyula Horn on 16 March 1995, the treaty was signed in Paris, just before the start of the OSCE conference. This was the same deadline that the Romanians and Hungarians failed to meet for their basic treaty. The Slovak-Hungarian treaty included provisions guaranteeing international borders, economic co-operation, new border crossings and the protection of minority rights. Both sides agreed to adhere to Council of Europe Recommendation 1201. Less than a week previously, Slovak Foreign Minister Juraj Schenk had said that collective rights and territorial autonomy should have no place in the treaty, but it now seemed as if Slovakia was agreeing to precisely these points, at least in theory. However, a series of remarks made immediately after the treaty was signed, served to show how theoretical its minority rights’ provisions were. Slovak Foreign Minister Schenk issued a statement the day after the signing, which said that the Slovak Government did not accept any formulation that acknowledged the collective rights of minorities. Ivan Gasparovic, the chairman of the Slovak Parliament and HZDS deputy, appeared to dismiss the treaty when he said it was in fact already implemented, because all individual rights were already enjoyed by the country’s minorities. This was echoed by Prime Minister Meciar himself, who said that there was nothing new in the basic treaty and its implementation would require no new measures. He described it as a “good piece of work for Slovakia”. And Jan Slota, leader of the extreme nationalist SNS, called the treaty premature and unacceptable and pointed out that it still had to be ratified by the Slovak parliament. The Hungarian parliament ratified the treaty within three months, on 11 June 1995, but it was to take the Slovaks over a year to do so. Meanwhile, Slovakia’s ethnic Hungarians were keen to take advantage as quickly as possible of the possibilities offered by the basic treaty. Egyutteles (Living Together) leader Miklos Duray soon issued a demand for the ethnic Hungarians to receive regional autonomy within a year. The Education and Language IssueUnder the 1990 (Czechoslovak) Law on the Official Language, minorities were guaranteed the right to use their own language for official business in towns and districts where they constituted more than 20 % of the population. This was less generous than the 10 % threshold proposed in the Komarno Declaration, but it was at least a legal principle to which the ethnic Hungarian community had been able to have recourse during earlier language disputes with the central authorities. However, in November 1995, Vladimir Meciar s government introduced a new draft Law on State Language. In August 1995, he had told Hungarian Prime Minister Gyula Horn that there would be consultations on the issue with the Council of Europe before the law was introduced, to prove it was not aimed against the language rights of ethnic minorities, but there is no sign that this was done. The new law required all official business to be conducted in Slovak, without any explicit provision for minority languages. A separate law on minority language was promised in the future. The law would ban languages other than Slovak in public administration, on street signs and public name plates. Only wedding ceremonies were exempt. Fines of up to SK 1,000,000 (US$ 34,000) could be imposed on anyone breaking the law. Prime Minister Meciar said that this law would improve the chances of the still unratified Slovak-Hungarian treaty being passed by parliament, presumably because it would ally the fears of nationalist Slovak deputies. Culture Minister Ivan Hudec said that the law was concerned purely with language and had nothing to do with ethnic minorities. On 15 November 1995, the draft was passed into law, with only three non-ethnic-Hungarian deputies voting with the 17 ethnic Hungarian deputies against it, a reminder that very few ethnic Slovak deputies, however moderate in principle, would risk voting against the grain on nationalist issues. Hungary protested strongly against the new Law On State Language; Foreign Minister Laszlo Kovacs described his reaction as “sorrow and dissatisfaction”, pointing out that Slovakia had ignored Council of Europe recommendations in drafting the law. A week later, Hungary recalled its ambassador to Bratislava for consultations, saying that Slovakia had broken the terms of the treaty signed by Prime Ministers Horn and Meciar in March 1995 and the issue must be resolved. Six months later, the Hungarian Government had still not sent its ambassador back to Bratislava. Local Administrations IssueBoth Slovakia’s ethnic Hungarians and the Slovak Government have paid much attention in their various ways to the question of local government and territorial division. Local autonomy was after all the main goal identified by Egyutteles leader Miklos Duray after the signing of the Slovak-Hungarian basic treaty in March 1995. Ethnic Hungarian leaders wanted to create small local administrative units, based on the density of the ethnic Hungarian population in each region. This was stated in the Komarno Declaration. But the Slovak Government planned larger, north-south administrative regions, which would have the effect of breaking up the ethnic Hungarian areas along the southern border with Hungary and diluting their demographic density with the ethnic Slovak populations to the north. Eight new regions were planned – Kosice, Presov, Banska Bystrica, Zilina, Trencin, Bratislava, Trnava and Nitra – none of which would have an ethnic Hungarian majority. And, as MKM deputy Pal Csaky pointed out, the law would have implications for the electoral districts in future elections, which could reduce the number of ethnic Hungarian deputies. Instead, the ethnic Hungarian deputies proposed a system of 16 regions, retaining the present districts. In an interview, Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar claimed that the country had been divided in this way because each unit needed a population of at least 500,000 people to be “capable of an independent social life”. He said there would then be around 80 districts. The final law passed on 22 March 1996 divided Slovakia into eight regions and 79 districts. The voting was not as decisive as it had been for the Law On State Language, with 82 deputies voting in favour and 52 against. The law was due to be implemented on 1 July 1996, but it was delayed when President Kovac refused to ratify it, and returned it to parliament for further debate. This was not, according to the President, because of the concerns of ethnic Hungarians, but because Bratislava would lose financial support under the new division. Ratification?!While education, the language law and the administrative division of the country were being discussed in parliament, the Slovak-Hungarian basic treaty was still awaiting ratification. In August 1995, Slovak Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar said that October or November 1995 was a realistic date for ratification. After a meeting with his Hungarian counterpart, Gyula Horn, he said that the treaty already “had enormous weight”, adding that ratification was now an internal Slovak matter.