Romania: ethnic issues and role of NGOs
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 12:56:30 +0300 (EET DST)
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
Subject: Romania: ethnic issues and role of NGOs
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Original sender: Olga Lazin <[email protected]>
Romania: ethnic issues and role of NGOs
Dear Boris and colleagues,
I post here my opinion on ethnic issues in Romania and what I consider
the role of Not-For-Private-Profits should be (diffusing ethnic
tension and more):
The New Ethnic Role for NGOs in the Region (Balkans.)
NGOs now seek to play a major role in resolving ethnic tensions.
Ethnic problems are exacerbated by the fact that most of the countries
are heterogeneous in their ethnic and religious composition. In
Bulgaria, for instance, about 1 million of the 9 million inhabitants
are Turks; Romani account for some 700,000 and another 400,000 are
Muslims. In Romania, the shares of population are Hungarians 7.1%,
Romani 7%; in Czech Republic Slovaks are 3%, and Romani are 2.4%. In
Slovakia, Hungarian are 10.7%, Romani 1.6%, Czechs Moravian, Ruthenian
more than 2% (Transitions, Open Media Research Institute, Vol.3 and 7
February 1997.)
What is considered the next "hotspot", the Kosovo province is
comprised of 90% ethnic Albanians.
Where once existed the monolithic non-recognition of ethnic
differences sector as espoused by the Soviet optic, since 1989 there
has been radical change to multidimensionality. The idea is now to
accommodate regional differences in development, tradition, local
circumstances, and
the current state of systemic transformations. As Andras Biro, a
Hungarian activist has put it: "For the first time in 40 years we are
reclaiming responsibility for our lives" (Salamon, Foreign Affairs,
Vol. 73, 1994: 113).
In Romania, in the immediate aftermath of the 1989, in several
ethnically heterogeneous villages (Bolintin, Casin, Miercurea Ciuc)
houses of Gypsy ethnic minority were burnt and heinous killings
occurred. On March 15, 1990 the Romanian security in direct complicity
with Ion Iliescu (then President) ordered/brought busloads of
Romanians from remote villages to Tirgu Mures. These villagers were
told that they were to save Romanians who were being beaten in the
city, where the usual March 15 celebrations were in progress. When the
busses arrived, the villagers attacked the participants of the
celebration and besieged the Hungarian minority's headquarters. It was
there that the playwright Andras S=FCt=F6 lost his eye.
Several Hungarians and Gypsies were beaten and jailed for years. In a
gesture of historic reconciliation, the current president
Constantinescu
has released them (1996). Nobody has ever investigated or publicly
exposed this case. The Romanian government (as the local government
did not have much power) did not even try to quell the situation. It
is ironic that only in the USA, where the Non-governmental sector has
almost become an industry, that conferences take place on the events
that took place in the Romania but are totally disconnected from the
realities in the region.
These 1990 events could happen because autonomous mediating
institutions of NGOs did not yet exist to encourage the different
ethnic groups to understand each other and to address issues treated
individual-to-individual. That is why a new confrontation took place
in Cluj and Targu Mures in July 1990.
NGOs could play a crucial role in early prevention actions, in
bringing locally all the players in practicing dialogue and
negotiation needed to
diffuse and deter ethnic hatred. As an effective non official way to
solve problems, NGOs facilitate preventive diplomacy.
TRANSNATIONAL PHILANTHROPY:
ROCKEFELLER, SOROS, AND THE RISE OF THE U.S. LEGAL MODEL
FOR FUNDING CIVIL SOCIETY
(MEXICO AND ROMANIA AS CASE STUDIES)
"Contrary to the doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism, in the real
world there are prolonged periods when market forces cannot
self-correct in time to best serve the common good. Resulting social
instability can only be corrected by government action"
- George Soros,
Atlantic Monthly, "The Capitalist Threat", January 1997
"Throughout the 19th century, in de Toqueville's 1830s America and
afterward, our society comprised not two, but three sectors;
government, markets, and civil society. In that era when,as Toqueville
observed, liberty was local and civic activity more prevalent, a
modest governmental sphere and an unassuming private sector were
overshadowed by an extensive civil society tied together by school,
church, town and voluntary association."
- Benjamin R. Barber,
In Search for Civil society: Can we Restore the Middle Ground Between
Government and Markets?
http://www.cpn.org/sections/partisans/perspectives/new_democrat/rebuild_search.html
Although the long debate about how to define "civil society" has
quite correctly looked not to the English model but to the U.S. model
as offering advanced lessons that well identify the permanent tension
between the government-bureaucratic sector and the non-governmental
sectors, debate has been trapped in philosophical and ideological
terms which provide no guidance to new post-statist countries about
how to establish and make operational the civil society needed to for
combat the negative heritage of statism. The genius of the U.S. model
for civil society is that because it obviously works so well, citizens
around the world seek to recreate it in their own countries. The
problem is that because it is not well understood even by its U.S.
leaders, they cannot explain in a way that it can operationally
duplicated. Our goal, then, is to define the operational structure
that can be replicated in the world at large.
The Crisis of Statism
The three quotes above suggest the nature of the debate about the role
of the state in our era of globalization when the importance of big
government has been called into question. The emergence of free
markets and the call for creation of civil society are symptomatic of
the crisis of centralism in formerly statist countries such as Mexico
and Romania. The process of this new globalization has been widely
studied and the new role of civil society has been addressed, serious
analysis about the legal framework for such society in the global era
has been ignored.
My contribution is to remedy this failure of analysis by analyzing the
theory of civil society in relation to legal frameworks and show how
theory has worked out in two countries, one in Latin America and one
in Eastern Europe. Mexico and Romania are important because they are
attempting to create civil society as countervailing power to the
state's dominance. Unfortunately centralism is powerfully anchored in
non-English speaking societies and difficult to overcome.
................
Olga Lazin
-------
>From the moderator: The entire text of this very interesting essay (42
Kb in plain text) is available from the MINELRES database by request.
Boris
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