Response to the threats made by Romanian ex-president Traian Bășescu on Facebook

On December the 2nd, 2016, Romanian ex-president Traian Bășescu made the statement (see below) titled The Hungarian Ambassador to Romania should be expelled. To this threat NAHC responded with the following open letter.

Dear Mr. Bășescu,

In response to your recent comments on your Facebook Blog to Prime Minister Victor Orbán of Hungary. It is important that you are reminded of the following information: Thomas Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States of America, noted that:

“No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand peoples about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property…”

In 1918 at Gyulafehérvár, on the 1st of December, in the eastern portion of the historic Kingdom of Hungary, the opposite of Wilsonian principles was forced upon Hungarian minorities – not by the people but by merely a 1,228 member delegation who made the final unlawful decision to join with Romania. That delegation’s decision created the new Romanian state.

The new Romanian National Assembly, for everybody’s peace-of-mind, stated the following:

  1. Complete freedom for all minorities. Minorities were promised the right to use their own language in public education, in the justice system, and according to their proportion, the right to make decision for laws and state legislation.
  2. Minorities would be endowed with equal rights and freedom within all denominations of the country.

Almost immediately following these statues, Romania refused to live up to its promises and then, as they do now, brutally enforced policies against the Hungarian minority populations.

Below are just a few examples of both historic and present-day injustices against Hungarians. These examples should bring to light some of the historic acts of injustice against Hungarian minorities in Romania.

  1. The University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Marosvásárhely has banned the use of the Hungarian language.
  2. Ongoing harassment of Hungarian leaders in counties with significant Hungarian minority populations.
  3. The banning of the use of the Székely flag, and the Székely peoples political rights in their struggle for rightful autonomy.
  4. Ongoing illegal manoeuvres by the state in which Hungarian churches are prohibited from re-acquiring their church properties.

You once boldly stated that the Hungarians in your country should feel equally happy as their Romanian colleagues and to celebrate the last 26 years of progress since the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is nothing less than the falsification of the real truth.

Both Hungary and Romania became part of the NATO and the European Union with the same obligations and liabilities. Sadly, only Hungary continues to protect the rights of minorities living in its territory, granting everybody absolute and fair administration of justice.

Until Romania ceases to ignore Wilsonian principles and the agreements at Gyulafehérvár, do not expect that either Romanian Hungarians or the Hungarian diplomatic field to celebrate the 1st of December.

Sincerely,
National Alliance of Hungarians in Canada

The complete post by Mr. Bășescu (translation by NAHC):

Hey, my chum, Viktor Orbán, we (Romanians) do not wish to pay you (Hungarians) a visit to Budapest without your consent, as we did it once in the course of the last hundred years. But do not provoke us, because our patience has its own limits. Emboldened by the fact that Donald Trump took notice of Viktor Orbán, the servile page, Péter Szíjjártó, has asked no more, no less of his diplomatic corps, in the spirit of the political panorama fuelled by Hungarian Extremism, than not to participate at the celebration of Romania’s National Day the world over, because, and I quote, „the Hungarian nation has nothing to celebrate on December 1”. I can come up with a long list of reasons why the Hungarians living in Romania could be at least as proud as Romanians on December 1. But to our greatest satisfaction, in contrast to Hungarians living in Hungary, the Hungarians of Romania have benefited in the last 26 years from a respectable political leadership, on both national and international levels, committed to NATO and UE values, values that in recent years have become elective and irrelevant to Budapest. In the light of this unprecedented insult to Romania, perpetrated by the Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Péter Szíjjártó, the only fitting solution is the immediate expulsion of the Hungarian Ambassador from Bucharest, and the recalling of the Romanian Ambassador from Budapest. Otherwise, these soldiers of fortune in the Orbán government will not realize that Romania, truly, extends to the Tisza (river)*. God save you if we remind ourselves of this**, demagogues of Budapest.

* In 1919 the Romanian Army invaded Hungary to crush the newly minted soviet-style Republic established briefly in the wake of a lost war, contributing to the subsequent dismemberment of the country. The crumbling communist regime misinformed and misused its hastily formed – vastly inferior – forces composed of commissars and bands of disillusioned soldiers returning from the front, and soon has been left with no army. The nation just stood and watched powerlessly, paralyzed. After marching into the Hungarian capital, the High Command of the retreating Romanian Army, emboldened by several ultimatums of the victorious Allies (The Triple Entente), was reluctant to withdraw behind former national borders, declaring arbitrarily a „new border” alongside the course of the Tisza, in the heart of Hungarian territory. Eventually, the Allies have ordered the Romanian Army back.
** …and do it again, implied.

The complete and original post by Mr. Bășescu:

Prietene Viktor Orban, noi nu vrem să vă vizităm la Budapesta, aşa cum am mai făcut-o în istoria ultimilor 100 de ani fără voia voastră. Dar nu ne provoca, pentru că avem şi noi limite. Încurajat de faptul că Donald Trump l-a băgat în seamă pe Viktor Orban, ministrul de externe maghiar, nevolnicul Peter Syijjarto, o panaramă politică născută sub pulpana extremismului maghiar, a cerut nici mai mult nici mai puţin decât ca personalul dimplomatic maghiar să nu participe nicăieri la ceremoniile ocazionate de ziua naţională a României pentru că, citez, „poporul maghiar nu are nimic de sărbătorit de 1 decembrie“.Pot să fac o lungă listă cu motivele pentru care maghiarii trăitori în România ar putea să fie cel puţin la fel de mândri ca românii cu ocazia zilei de 1 Decembrie. Dar cea mai importantă satisfacţie poate fi aceea că, spre deosebire de maghiarii din Ungaria, maghiarii din România au parte, în România ultimilor 26 de ani, de o conducere politică respectabilă la nivel naţional şi internaţional, ataşată valorilor NATO şi UE, valori care la Budapesta pare că au devenit facultative şi nerelevante în momentul ultimii ani. Având în vedere afrontul fără precedent adus de ministrul de externe maghiar Peter Syijjarto, României, singura soluţie demnă este expulzarea imediată a ambasadorului Ungariei de la Bucureşti şi rechemarea ambasadorului României de la Budapesta. Altfel aceşti aventurieri din guvernul lui Viktor Orban nu vor înţelege că România adevărată este până la Tisa. Să vă ferească Dumezeu să ne amintim de acest lucru, lătrăi politici budapestani. [huff.ro], [adevarul.ro]