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| Intolerance in Slovakia: The Anti-Hungarian "Slovak Citizenship Act" | ||||||||
The Case of Oliver Boldoghy
"You can't give in to tyranny, if I bow before the anti-democratic rules of the Slovakian government, if I accept the rules of the game, then tomorrow the entire Hungarian community will be bullied" - said Olivér Boldoghy to Magyar Hirlap. AHF's letter continued, "this decision is not only contrary to American and European practices, it violates the Slovak constitution, which provides that “no one must be deprived of the citizenship of the Slovak Republic against his will.”
The letter to the Helsinki Commission Chairmen appears below and it availaible for [download]. The attached statement, "Slovakia Should Respect the Rights of its Hungarian and Other Minorities," is also available for download and appears in its entirety [below] December 1, 2011 Honorable Christopher H. Smith, Honorable Benjamin L. Cardin Dear Mr. Chairman and Co-Chairman: The American Hungarian Federation (“Federation”), founded in 1906 and representing a broad cross-section of the Hungarian American community, supports democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. It also supports the U.S. Helsinki Commission’s mission of monitoring compliance with the Helsinki Accords and advancing comprehensive security through promotion of human rights and democracy. An indispensable element of sustainable security in the region involves the respect for minority rights. Today a persistent problem in many parts of the region is the mistreatment of the Roma, conspicuous anti-Semitism and discrimination against Hungarian minorities in states neighboring Hungary, including Slovakia. Intolerance and discrimination targeting any group based on ethnicity, nationality or religion is not acceptable. The most recent anti-Hungarian incident involves Slovakia stripping Oliver Boldoghy of his Slovak citizenship after becoming a dual citizen. This decision is not only contrary to American and European practices, it violates the Slovak constitution, which provides that “no one must be deprived of the citizenship of the Slovak Republic against his will.” This decision needs to be reversed. It also must not be viewed in isolation, but from the perspective of a series of official actions that have created an inhospitable environment for Slovakia’s Hungarian minority. These include, for example, gerrymandering administrative divisions; adopting a resolution proposed by extremist Jan Slota confirming the Benes decrees (which imposed collective guilt on Hungarians and continue to adversely affect them); adopting a discriminatory language law; and refusing to exonerate Janos Esterhazy, who as leader of the Hungarian Party in Tiso’s Fascist Slovakia was the only Member of Parliament to vote against the deportation of Jews in 1942. (On November 3, 2011, the Anti-Defamation League presented the Jan Karski Courage to Care Award posthumously to Esterhazy.) A more detailed summary of these issues is attached. In conclusion, we urge the Helsinki Commission to engage Slovakia to address these issues to ensure that its minorities are not threatened by the forced assimilation of their culture and identity and to encourage it to build a tolerant society by respecting the human and minority rights of its Hungarian and other minorities. This would promote genuine democracy, defuse tensions caused by discrimination and intolerance, and promote U.S. interests in a Europe that is whole, free, stable and secure. Sincerely, Frank Koszorus, Jr. ---------------------------------------------------------------
SLOVAKIA SHOULD RESPECT THE RIGHTS OF ITS HUNGARIAN AND OTHER MINORITIES December 2011 The American Hungarian Federation (the “Federation”), founded in 1906 as an umbrella organization representing a broad cross-section of the Hungarian American community, supports democracy, human and minority rights and the rule of law in Central and Eastern Europe. The Federation also supports continued American engagement in the region. This statement focuses on two issues: (1) minority rights as the prerequisite to democracy in the multi-national state of Slovakia; and (2) intolerance and discrimination against the Hungarian minorities living there. MINORITY RIGHTS: AN INDISPENSABLE ELEMENT OF REAL DEMOCRACY AND SUSTAINABLE SECURITY The United States must remain engaged in the region to help strengthen democratic institutions and the stability that derives from democracy. That goal was among the reasons the United States fought the Cold War. Moreover, a strong, secure and stable NATO will also be in a better position to substantially contribute to the war against terrorists and resist Russia’s attempts to expand its influence in the region. With the exception of NATO’s enlargement, some quickly lost sight of the economic, moral and spiritual damage left in the wake of close to fifty years of Communism that had been imposed on the region by Soviet bayonets. Free elections were held and therefore nothing more needed to be done, seemed to be the attitude shared by some decision and opinion makers. Thus, for example, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty broadcasts to the region were prematurely phased out. Despite great strides toward freedom, democracy and democratic institution building, there is work to be done, as old impulses die hard. An indispensable element of democracy and sustainable security in the region involves the respect for minority rights, the rule of law, and constitutional democracy, as opposed to illiberal democracy. This important question does not always receive the attention it should. As the tragic events in the nineties demonstrated, a primary cause of tensions and violence in the region is discrimination against and intolerance toward national, ethnic and religious minorities by the majority. A persistent problem in many parts of Central and Eastern Europe is the mistreatment of the Roma, conspicuous anti-Semitism and discrimination against Hungarians in, among other places, Slovakia. A government that fails or refuses to respect minority rights can hardly be deemed to be genuinely democratic, even if it has come to power through the ballot. Moreover, granting legitimate minority rights to historical groups would defuse tensions and promote political stability and greater cooperation in the Carpathian Basin. The issue of minority rights has nothing to do with borders or irredentism as some erroneously or falsely assert in order to ignore their international legal obligations. It has everything to do with meaningful and enduring stability in Central Europe, however. The Hungarian minorities who live in countries neighboring Hungary (due to the Treaty of Trianon which dismembered the country) seek redress for their grievances strictly through peaceful and democratic means and contribute substantially to sustainable stability in the region. The stability flowing from collective rights is not only of interest to Hungarians, but should also be of great interest to the U.S. and NATO. SLOVAKIA: ANTI-HUNGARIAN MEASURES AND ATTITUDES More than two decades after the collapse of Communism, Slovakia has yet to fulfill its promises to its ethnic Hungarians. Although Slovakia was accepted into NATO and the EU based, in part, on these promises, the irrefutable record demonstrates that its laws and practices fail to conform to European and Western standards relating to human and minority rights. The members of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia often face intolerant or discriminatory laws, practices or attitudes. A few examples of Slovakia’s less than exemplary record will suffice. Punitive Citizenship Law. Hungary’s citizenship law facilitates the acquisition of Hungarian citizenship by ethnic Hungarians living outside of Hungary, not just in countries neighboring Hungary. Nevertheless, Slovakia passed a punitive citizenship law specifically in response to Hungary’s citizenship law. While on its face Slovakia’s law deprives dual citizens of Slovak citizenship, the timing of the new law clearly demonstrates that it targets Hungarians. Slovakia’s law is not only contrary to European and American practices and norms, it violates Paragraph 2 of Article 5 of the Slovak constitution, which provides that “no one must be deprived of the citizenship of the Slovak Republic against his will.” NOTE: The Case of Oliver Boldoghy. The most recent anti-Hungarian incident involves Slovakia stripping Oliver Boldoghy of his Slovak citizenship after becoming a dual citizen. This decision must be reversed and the citizenship law substantially modified or repealed. Janos Esterhazy Still Awaits Exoneration. Slovakia should at long last exonerate Janos Esterhazy who as the leader of the Hungarian Party in Tiso’s Fascist Slovakia was the only Member of Parliament to vote against the deportation of Jews in 1942 and the anti-Semitic laws, which he criticized as not being in accordance with humanitarian principles. Esterhazy also personally helped Jews flee Slovakia. Immediately after the war in 1945, Esterhazy was arrested on the orders of Gustav Husak, a post-war communist leader of Czechoslovakia, for speaking out against the discriminatory anti-Hungarian measures introduced by the government. These measures, rooted in the anti-democratic concept of collective guilt, stripped ethnic Hungarians of their citizenship, virtually all of their rights, property (without compensation), dignity, and, in some cases, their lives. After being handed over to the KGB, Esterhazy was convicted as a “war criminal” by a Soviet court. In 1947, while Esterhazy was imprisoned in the Soviet Union, the National Court in Slovakia in a perfunctory proceeding, and without any evidence, sentenced him to death in absentia on the trumped up charges of being a fascist and having contributed to the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. It is a cruel irony that Esterhazy was wrongly accused of doing exactly what Slovakia would do on its own forty-six years later in the “Velvet Divorce” of 1993 -- dissolving Czechoslovakia. Upon his return from Russia, Esterhazy’s sentence was commuted to life in prison. He died in a Czechoslovak prison in 1957 and was buried in an undisclosed mass grave. While Russia exonerated him on January 21, 1993, acknowledging that he had been “arrested without cause,” more than twenty years after the fall of Communism, Slovakia astonishingly refuses to exonerate Esterhazy, an unsung hero of anti-Nazi resistance. NOTE: ADL Honors Esterhazy for Saving Persecuted Jews. On November 3, 2011, the Anti-Defamation League presented the Jan Karski Courage to Care Award posthumously to Esterhazy. The language law threatened the Hungarian minority’s culture and infringed on fundamental freedoms. The mere existence of the law, as drafted, caused considerable uncertainty, fear and anxiety among ethnic Hungarians. The result was to chill the use of their mother tongue, precisely why this law was so odious and anti-democratic. There was no place for such a law in 21st century Europe. The language law was among the latest manifestation of the previous Slovak government’s intolerance toward its Hungarian minority. Not surprisingly, the Slovak National Party (“SNS”) was a member of the ruling coalition. Its chairman Jan Slota is known for his xenophobic outbursts: “Hungarians are the cancer of the Slovak nation, without delay we need to remove them from the body of the nation.” The Stephen Roth Institute has called the SNS “an extremist nationalist party.” Such extremist attitudes contributed to the adoption of the law, even though Slovakia promised to respect the rights of its minorities before being accepted into NATO and the EU. Not only did the law cause considerable internal unease in Slovakia, it threatened much needed unity within NATO by increasing tensions between Slovakia and Hungary – both NATO allies. International objections to the law included the conclusions by the European Commission for Democracy Through Law (the “Venice Commission”), which criticized provisions of this law as being incompatible with international standards and reminded Slovakia that it was not absolved "of the obligation to comply with the provisions of the international conventions for the protection of national minorities." While this odious law has been modified, it is still on the books and does not reflect a tolerant attitude toward the Hungarians. Lingering Effects of the Benes Decrees. The Slovak Parliament on September 20, 2007 adopted a resolution proposed by extremist Jan Slota ratifying and confirming the Benes Decrees originally issued between May 14 and October 27, 1945. Among the most controversial decrees were the ones which stripped ethnic Hungarians of their citizenship, virtually all of their rights, property (without compensation), dignity, homes and, in some cases, their lives – all on the unjustifiable basis of collective guilt. In postwar Czechoslovakia old, feeble and disabled retired civil servants were denied their pensions. Hungarian schools were closed and the Hungarian language forbidden even in their churches. Czechoslovakia also pursued a policy of ethnic cleansing in southern Slovakia and sent thousands of Hungarians to camps. The debilitations continue to affect many of the victims of the crimes committed in post-World War II Czechoslovakia. The concept of collective guilt is abhorrent to Americans and to anyone committed to the rule of law, human rights and democracy. Indeed, the United States did not endorse the principle of collective guilt of Hungarians. The June 12, 1945 memorandum of the American political Mission to Budapest confirms this: The United States Government would not consider it justified to deal with members of an ethnic group who constitute a minority as criminals against the state and as subject to expulsion from its territory, only because of their ethnic origin. Nevertheless, as a result of pressure from the victorious powers, including the Soviet Union which favored Czechoslovakia, Hungary was forced to agree to a “population exchange.” The Benes Decrees are still on the books and their discriminatory impact remains in effect. Compensation has yet to be paid to those whose properties were summarily and unjustly confiscated and legal redress for the inequities suffered by Hungarians solely because of their nationality are not in sight. Slovakia should provide legal redress to remedy the continuing and discriminatory effects of the Benes Decrees and thereby adopt the values shared by the trans-Atlantic community of nations. CONCLUSION Slovakia should be encouraged to build a tolerant society by respecting the human and minority rights of its Hungarian and other minorities and the rule of law, thereby converting promises into deeds. Concrete steps it should be urged to take include:
These actions would defuse tensions caused by discrimination and intolerance, improve Hungarian/Slovak relations, promote United States interests in a Europe that is whole, free stable and secure, and serve the cause of justice, genuine democracy and the rule of law. [<< Back to News from Slovakia] |
Slovak Constitution: “no one must be deprived of the citizenship of the Slovak Republic against his will.” The Slovak Citizenship Act, specifically targets Hungarians and was amended to combat Hungary granting citizenship freely to Slovaks, was adopted last year shortly after Hungary announced its plans to grant citizenship to ethnic Hungarians abroad. The law in force in Slovakia clearly states that anyone accepting the citizenship of another country will be stripped of their Slovak citizenship. The Case of Ilonka Aladarne Tamas
More Coverage of the Slovak Citizenship Issue
Statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic to the case of Olivér Boldoghy. While complying with general principles and norms of international law concerning citizenship, every state has a sovereign right to set its own legal regulation of citizenship. The current situation and the Oliver Boldoghy-case result from non-standard Hungarian citizenship regulation granting the Hungarian citizenship on the basis of ethnicity without any real ties of the person to the state. [read more]
Slovak Language Law Related Articles Under the Slovak Language Law, the use of the minority language in official communication would be punishable in towns and villages where the ethnic community makes up less than 20 percent of the total population. The amendment requires that all documentation of minority schools should be duplicated in the state language. The law stipulates that the names of streets and buildings anywhere in Slovakia must be stated in the Slovak language [despite 1100-year-old tradition] and it also introduces sanctions of up to €5,000 ($7,000) on those who break rules promoting the use of Slovak in public and for municipalities and public offices for not using the Slovak language "properly."
LANGUAGE laws may protect minority rights or infringe them. Slovakia’s new law, which comes into force on September 1st, is under fire for its harshness. It imposes fines of up to €5,000 ($7,000) on those who break rules promoting the use of Slovak in public. [read more] << Go to AHF's Coverage of the Slovak Language Law Why So Many Hungarians Across the Border? One thousand years of nation building successfully delineated groups based on culture, religion, geography, and other attributes to create the countries with which we are so familiar. While some Western European nations would continue power struggles and princely battles and civil wars, Hungary, founded in 896, was a peaceful multi-ethnic state for a 1000 years and her borders were virtually unchanged. Until 1920... The Treaty of Trianon in 1920... in the aftermath of WWI, was extremely harsh on Hungary and unjustifiably one-sided. The resulting "treaty" lost Hungary an unprecedented 2/3 of her territory, and 1/2 of her total population or 1/3 of her Hungarian-speaking population. Add to this the loss of up to 90% of vast natural resources, industry, railways, and other infrastructure. In the newly created Slovakia, the tragedy of 1920 that befell the historic Hungarian communities was only the beginning. The Benes Decrees sent millions of people, who had lived in the region for many centuries, off in sealed wagons, away from their homes, their families - not to mention the odd ones who died on the trip. Tens of thousands of these were Hungarian. More recently, the Slovak Language Law makes the use of the minority language in official communication punishable in towns and villages where the ethnic community makes up less than 20 percent of the total population. The amendment requires that all documentation of minority schools should be duplicated in the state language. The law stipulates that the names of streets and buildings anywhere in Slovakia must be stated in the Slovak language [despite 1100-year-old tradition] and it also introduces sanctions of 100 to 5000 euros for municipalities and public offices for not using the Slovak language "properly." The following graphic shows ethnic distribution in Slovakia and population decline from 1910 - 1991:
Ethnic Distribution in the Kingdom of Hungary in 1910 (Hungarians shown in red)
Hungarian populations declined significantly after forced removals such as the Benes Decrees and other pograms, the effects of WWI, and Trianon in 1920. With continued pressure and discriminative policies such as the 2009 Slovak Language Law, this trend continued over the past 90 years.
Links
Related Articles By Any Other Name: Hungary, Apartheid,
and the Benes Decrees These decrees sent millions of people, who had lived in the region for many centuries, off in sealed wagons, away from their homes, their families - not to mention the odd ones who died on the trip. WHAT THE BENES DECREES SAY One may be forgiven for suspecting, by the casual way the Benes Decrees are often disparaged by commentators, that many of those who write about the Decrees have never taken the trouble to [read them]. Living as I have for over 20 years in South Africa, I know this language well. It is the language of Apartheid. There is no moral difference, to my mind, in withdrawing civil rights, confiscating private property and deporting people, whether they be Black South Africans sent to some "Homeland/Bantustan," or Armenians, or deported Chechens, or Germans and Hungarians. The Hungarians who lived in what is now Slovakia and Trans-Carpathian Ukraine (which was given to Stalin by a grateful Benes in 1945) were more than one million strong in 1910. By 1930, thanks to the above-mentioned "administrative" cleansing, their numbers had been reduced to 585,434. After Hungary reclaimed its lands in 1939, people began moving back to their homes. In 1941-45, there were about 761,000 in what is today Slovakia alone. [read more] Allied Omertá: The "Benes Decrees" began in the mind of Czech statesman Edvard Benes sometime in 1940. He made some quite clear statements about his plans by 1941. The plans? To kill and/or expel all people of German or Hungarian ethnicity/language from a reunited Czechoslovakia, which had fallen apart at the start of the war. This is the sort of thing you would expect from a Himmler or a Beria, not a guy who is lionised in Western history books, and generally books about Central Europe, as the only true "democrat" in the region. But Czechoslovakia was never a complete democracy. Just as interwar Hungary, or Poland, or Yugoslavia, were not. Not quite. In Czechoslovakia, designed as a "national homeland" for Slavs, the Slavic Rusyns had to have two votes to equal one Czech vote! Democracy? [read more] THE PRESIDENTIAL DECREES
OF EDWARD BENES The first Czechoslovak Republic (1918-1938) was recreated in 1945 at the end of World War II and existed until the end of 1992. In both cases, Czechoslovakia utterly failed to form a governmental structure that secured freedom, prosperity, peace, and equal rights for all citizens of the state. In 1918, the newly founded Czechoslovak Republic was entirely carved out of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy by a unilateral decision of the victorious entente powers. The dictated peace treaties of Versailles, Saint-Germain-en-Laye and Trianon were not an outcome of a true peace conference at which the defeated would also have been given the opportunity to enunciate the limits of acceptable conditions for peace. Such a peace conference was never assembled. The Versailles peace treaty with Germany was condemned by non-interested parties. In fact, the US Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, had declared that "the Versailles treaty menaces the existence of civilization," and two popes had stigmatized the instrument. Benedict XV condemned it for "the lack of an elevated sense of justice, the absence of dignity, morality or Christian nobility," and Pius XI, in his 1922 encyclical "Ubi arcam Dei," deplored an artificial peace set down on paper "which instead of arousing noble sentiments increases and legitimizes the spirit of vengeance and rancour." The peace treaty of Trianon (1920) with Hungary resulted in the dismemberment of the thousand- year- old Hungarian Kingdom, as a result of an unbelievably inimical attitude of the allied representatives toward the Magyars. The consequence to Hungary was a loss of 71.5% of its territory and 63.6% of its population. The extreme tragedy of Hungary can be illustrated by comparing the smaller losses in 1871 of France to Germany, in which France gave up 2.6% of its territory and 4.1% of its population to Germany. The Trianon treaty forced three and a half million Magyars to live, without their consent, in Czechoslovakia, the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenians and Rumania, with the stroke of a pen. The right of self-determination of nations, solemnly promised in the 14 points of US President Woodrow Wilson, was apparently forgotten. [more] Corvinus.com - Czech and Slovak Affairs Page The Hungarian Problem Newly Elected Prime Minister Viktor Orban said it well: "The borders of the Hungarian nation and the Hungarian State do not coincide." This is true, as witness the fact that fully one-third of all Hungarians are minorities in neighbouring countries, most just on the far side of the border. This is, naturally, a problem for Hungarians. It is also a problem for all the states who got Hungarian lands. Many in neighbouring countries, and politicians in many more, have said in the past, and no doubt will say in the future: "Why don't they just go home?!!" But they are home!
The key weakness of these treaties was that neither ever asked - or cared - what the local population wanted. Did they want to join a new state (e.g., Czechoslovakia) did they want to stay with Hungary, or did they want independence or autonomy or what? The fact that these questions have never even been asked, let alone answered, in a supposedly democratic age, remains the central problem of the Hungarian minorities in the countries immediately surrounding Hungary. [more] [back to all AHF news] A
Case Study on Trianon
The Hungarian peace delegation signed the peace treaty consisting of 14 points at the so-called Great Trianon palace, near Paris, on June 4, 1920. Hungary's fate was determined for an unforeseeable future by the second part of the treaty which defined the new borders. According to this section Hungary's area (without Croatia) would be reduced from 282,000 km2 to 93,000 km2, whereas its population decreased from 18 million to 7.6 million. This meant that Hungary lost two thirds of its territory, whereas Germany lost but 10 percent and Bulgaria but 8 percent to the benefit of their victorious neighbors. As regards population, Hungary lost more than 60 percent of its inhabitants as opposed to the 10 percent lost by Germany. In the lands taken away from Hungary there lived approximately 10 million persons. Persons of Hungarian nationality constituted 3,424,000 in the areas taken away from Hungary. Of these 1,084,000 were attached to Czechoslovakia, 1,705,000 to Romania, 564,000 to Yugoslavia, and 65,000 to Austria. Thus 33.5 percent of all Hungarians came under foreign rule, i.e., every third Hungarian. For the sake of comparison. while the treaties of Versailles and Neuilly placed only one German or one Bulgarian out of every twenty under foreign rule, the Trianon treaty placed seven out of twenty Hungarians in the same position. Furthermore about one half of the Hungarian minority attached to the neighboring states was ethnically directly next to the main body of Hungarians on the other side of the borders. Had the peace treaties signed in the Paris suburbs really tried to bring about, however incidentally, nation-states, then it would have had to leave at least 11/4 to 2 million more Hungarians inside Hungary. In contrast the 42 million inhabitants of the successor states there were about 16 million minorities, as a consequence of which Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia became multinational states much like the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy had been. What is more, according to the census of 1910 the percentage of Hungarians in Hungary had reached 54.4 percent, whereas in the nations that came about as a result of the peace treaties, in Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, the leading Czech and Serbian elements constituted but a minority as compared to the other ethnic groups. The Treaty of Trianon was a great blow to Hungary in economic terms as well. Hungary was deprived of 62.2 percent of its railroad network, 73.8 percent of its public roads, 64.6 percent of its canals, 88 percent of its forests, 83 percent of its iron ore mines and of all its salt mines. At the Peace Conference the Entente powers, in order to satisfy the imperialist greed of their allies in central Europe, cut across roads, canals, railroad lines, split cities and villages in two, deprived mines of their entrances, etc. There was but one modification of the frontier: thanks to Italian intercession
and the stand taken by patriotic forces in Western Hungary, a plebiscite
was obtained in Sopron and its environs. At the plebiscite of December
4, 1921, 65 percent of the population opted for Hungary. Join online!
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12/02/2011 - Slovakia strips citizenship to ethnic Hungarian minorties who assert their right to dual citizenship, an international norm, and in violation of their own Constitution. AHF submits a statement to US Congress and the Helsinki Commission and states, "Intolerance and discrimination targeting any group based on ethnicity, nationality or religion is not acceptable... The most recent anti-Hungarian incident involves Slovakia stripping Oliver Boldoghy, an actor and businessman, of of his Slovak citizenship after becoming a dual citizen.
12/12/2011 - UPDATE: The Case of Ilonka Tamas. The latest outrage from Slovakia: a 99-year-old teacher loses citizenship. AHF issues a follow up statement to the Helskinki Commission. Her case is particularly disconcerting. She was born in 1912 in Rimaszombat (Slovak name: Rimavska Sobota), then the seat of Gomor County and part of Hungary. Thus, Mrs. Tamas was born in 1912 as a Hungarian citizen on Hungarian soil. She never relocated, but with the Treaty of Trianon, she became first a citizen of Czechoslovakia and then, with the recent breakup of Czechoslovakia, a citizen of Slovakia. She is now a “person without a registered address.” 
12/5/2011 - 
11/28/2011 - 
"Álláspontjának Tisztázására Szólította Fel az EBESZ Kisebbségügyi Főbiztosát az Amerikai Magyar Szövetség" - MTI 2011. szeptember 30., péntek 1:14
