EXCLUSIVE. The Council of Europe is stirring the Hungarians from Romania at ETHNIC SECESSIONISM. An official document of CE is rewriting the history of so-called Székely Land DOCUMENT

By Dan Tanasă 

In early June the Council of Europe’s European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) released the monitoring report on Romania, adopted in March 2014. 

“Székely Land” existed as a legal entity from medieval times. This is what the authors of the ECRI Report on Romania are claiming. The report has a number of inaccuracies that put Romania in a very bad light. A European institution that should have been objective is taking up themes that are produced and are promoted aggressively in the Romanian public space by Hungarian extremist organizations. Key ideas of revisionist discourse promoted by DAHR (The Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania) in the Hungarian media from Romania and Hungary are found in the pages of this report which should have contained objective interpretation of the situation and not DAHR’s opinion regarding the alleged discrimination of the Hungarian community in Romania.

Like DAHR, the authors of the report are taking up the idea accordingly to which Covasna County Court has established that the hoisting of the flag of the so-called “Szekely Land” on public buildings in Romania is legal (page no. 48 of the report), but this is completely untrue. This is because absolutely all the cases related to the hoisting of the flag of the so-called “Székely Land” on public buildings in Romania are irrevocably establishing its illegally hoisting on public buildings (documents in Romanian here). Moreover, the report’s authors are arguing that the flag of the so-called “Székely Land” would be a local symbol, which is completely false. The flag of so-called “Székely Land” is a ethnic symbol invented in 2009 by Hungarian extremists campaigning for the territorial secessionism of the so-called “Székely Land” (details in Romanian here). The Székely Land is also the home of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Romanians who are not recognizing the flag of the “Székely Land” as being their own.

The enforcement of the law regarding the flags of Covasna and Harghita counties (only in the case of Harghita county’ flag was something done), ethnic flags as well, is condemned by the authors of the report who are considering that the actions taken were disproportionate. The report’s authors also are taking up the DAHR’s theories regarding properties belonging to the minorities’ churches despite the fact that there is evidence that in some cases Romania gave in inexplicably some properties (a highly publicized case here).

ECRI Report: Székely Land existed and it has had a flag and a heraldic symbol 

The report’s authors are managing to scandalize by the lack of accuracy of the information contained in the report, as is it the case regarding the situation of the Hungarian minority in Romania. Page 47 of the report contains the following information:

“Most of people who identify themselves as having Hungarian origin live in three counties of Transylvania (also called Székely Land, these are Harghita, Covasna and part of Mures County); in the first two they represent 80% of the population. The Hungarian community living in these counties has a strong cultural identity. Székely Land existed as a legal entity from medieval times until the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 and became part of Romania in 1920. Since medieval times it has had its own flag and its heraldic symbol”.

It is difficult to understand the sources of information used by the authors of this report. From what the authors are claiming it looks like the report was drawn up in the offices of DAHR or in the offices of Budapest’s revisionist propaganda. This is completely outrageous if we consider that these completely false allegations are made in an official document of the European Union that incites Hungarians in Romania to ethnic secession by promoting falsehoods.

Regarding the authors’ statements on the historical issue of the so-called “Székely Land” I asked Transylvanian historian Vasile Lechinţan to enlighten us. He was kind enough to clarify the things:

Vasile Lechinţan: ”On May 24th, 1659 the Diet from Sebes established that each of the three privileged ethnic groups should be represented on the coat of arms of Transylvania. Romanians, the majority ethnic group of Transylvania, were not represented as they did not have the status of a political nation. This is why the Szeklers are represented by the sun and the moon symbols. But this was not the symbol of a land, nor the flag showing the local autonomy of a land, nor the flag of ethnic Szekely/Hungarian autonomy, especially since the Romanians also lived among Szekely population and a lot of Szeklers were living in big cities like Cluj, so the symbols we not territorial.

A EU official document on discrimination in Romania (ECRI Report on Romania. Fourth monitoring cycle. Adopted on March 19th, 2014. Published on June 3, 2014, page 47, footnote. 107) says that “Székely Land existed as a legal entity from medieval times until the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867” (until 1867 the Székely seats, the Transylvanian Saxon’s seats and the Hungarian counties, called this way despite the fact that they were inhabited by a vast Romanian majority, were administrative entities of a unitary Transylvania, not of a Transylvania “associated” with a so-called autonomous “Szekely Land”) and that “Since medieval times it has had its own flag and heraldic symbol” is only a stir  of the Hungarians from Romania to claim something they never had as ethnic territorial autonomy, there never existed a “Szekely Land” as a autonomous state entity, the Dukes of Transylvania and the Kings of Hungary never allowed Szeklers to have territorial autonomy from Transylvania or Hungary. They always had local rulers from outside their land, Romanians such as Balc and Drag; Princes of Maramures were also rulers of Széklers at the end of the fourteenth century, as well as Ioan of Hunedoara and Stefan Mailat were rulers of the Szeklers. Unfortunately, an official EU document incites ethnic separatism in Romania, where Hungarians live everywhere, most of them in harmony with their Romanian, German, Roma etc. neighbors. The ethnic autonomy would up heave the whole Romania due to the relocation of populations or distrust between ethnic groups and would fulfill the gold dream of Hungarian revisionist propaganda of ethnic cleansing of non-Hungarian population (Romanians, Germans, Romas etc.) in the so-called “Szekely Land”, an artificial state entity unfortunately promoted in an official EU document”.

Questions that are compelling the Bucharest authorities to react 

The way the report is written and the inaccuracies on which is based on will fuel the secessionist propaganda of Hungarian extremist organizations such as DAHR, Hungarian Civic Party and Hungarian Political Party in Transylvania. This raises a number of questions about the reaction (or rather lack of reaction) of the Bucharest authorities:

Who were the Romanian officials who had contact with the foreign experts who drafted this report?

Why the Romanian Government was not prepared to prevent the inclusion in the final report of such falsehoods?

Why is there no any mention regarding the ethnic discrimination against Romanians from Covasna, Harghita and Mures counties?

Why Bucharest authorities allow DAHR, one of the ruling parties now in Romania, to lie the foreign experts by compiling false reports about Romania, reports that will remain in history and that Hungarian extremists will use against Romania?

Why the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Romanian Government didn’t challenge the report in order to bring to public attention the actual data?

ECRI report can be found here.

NOTE: This article is the translation of the Romanian version published here.