MINELRES: Romania: Ethnic Minority Briefs No. 66

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Original sender: Divers Bulletin <edivers_buletin@mediafax.ro>


No. 66/ August 18, 2003

DIVERS
- reporting ethnic diversity -

SUMMARY
1. BUCHAREST TO PROTECT RIGHTS OF ROMANIAN MINORITIES ABROAD
2. ETHNIC HUNGARIANS ABROAD PRESSURE BUDAPEST OVER DUAL CITIZENSHIP
3. ROMANIAN, MOLDOVAN PRESIDENTS COOL SPAT OVER ETHNIC ORIGINS IN
MOLDOVA...
4. ... AS MOLDOVA IS TO GRADUALLY INTRODUCE 'INTEGRATED HISTORY.'

FEATURE
5. HOLOCAUST MEMORIES DIM IN ROMANIA

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BUCHAREST TO PROTECT RIGHTS OF ROMANIAN MINORITIES ABROAD
BUCHAREST -- The government is working on draft legislation that would
protect the rights of Romanian minorities living abroad, Prime Minister
Adrian Nastase announced on 9 August. At a meeting with representatives
of the Romanian diaspora, he explained that Hungary's Status Law, which
grants preferential treatment to ethnic Hungarians from neighboring
states, could be used as a model. He said Romania's appeal to
"international referees" in its dispute with Hungary over the Status Law
has generated the creation of new European standards produced by rulings
of the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe, the OSCE, and the EU.
Romania, he said, can now apply those standards in elaborating
legislation of its own in defending the rights of Romanian minorities
abroad. "Whether we like it or not," Nastase observed, "the most
efficient, the most advanced, and the most dynamic model is the
Hungarian one. Why should we start inventing models of our own?" he
added. Representatives of Romanian communities in Greece, France,
Serbia, the Ukraine, the United States, Germany and Japan participated
in the meeting. (DIVERS)

ETHNIC HUNGARIANS ABROAD PRESSURE BUDAPEST OVER DUAL CITIZENSHIP
BUCHAREST/BUDAPEST � After ethnic Hungarians in Vojvodina asked Budapest
them to grant them dual nationality, Hungarian Democratic Federation of
Romania Chairman (UDMR) Bela Marko said in an interview with the Cluj
Hungarian-language daily "Szabadsag" that the UDMR supports the idea of
dual citizenship for ethnic Hungarians living outside Hungary.
Furthermore, a committee tasked with setting up a National Council of
Hungarians in Transylvania as well as joined the calls. But, on August
13, Hungarian Foreign Minister Laszlo Kovacs told a Hungarian-language
Transylvanian weekly that it is "childish" to believe that 1 million
ethnic Hungarians abroad can become Hungarian citizens on the basis of a
single decision, Radio Free Europe reported. In an interview with
"Erdelyi Riport," Kovacs remarked that dual citizenship is "not an
issue, as any ethnic Hungarian in Vojvodina or Romania can apply
[individually] for Hungarian citizenship." He said collectively granting
citizenship would create a "catastrophic situation," since the same
health and social care available to residents of Hungary would have to
be provided to another 3 million people. "In my opinion, such an
irresponsible proposal only serves to stir up the political mood,"
Kovacs added. (DIVERS)

ROMANIAN, MOLDOVAN PRESIDENTS COOL SPAT OVER ETHNIC ORIGINS IN
MOLDOVA...
CHISINAU - The presidents of neighboring Romania and Moldova pledged on
early August to pursue a "pragmatic" relationship, following a dispute
over whether the Moldovan people are of Romanian origin or not, AFP
reported. President Vladimir Voronin of Moldova had caused controversy
by arguing in a recent paper that his country was peopled by native
Moldovans, and that ethnic Romanians form only a small minority. This is
the precise opposite of the view held in Bucharest. To make matters
worse, a "Moldovan-Romanian dictionary" appeared recently, suggesting
that the two countries speak different languages.
Romanian historians insist that Moldova is predominantly ethnic Romanian
and that the language spoken there is Romanian. Commentators in
Chisinau, the Moldovan capital, accuse the Romanians of putting
Moldova's integrity and independence in doubt. Meeting with the Romanian
President Ion Iliescu at this crossing over the Prut river, which forms
the border between the two countries, Voronin said it was time to move
beyond "poetic images" and get working on "more dynamic commercial
exchanges." Iliescu attacked those who questioned Romania's intentions.
He recalled that Romania was the first to recognize Moldova's
independence in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. "We do not
wish to erect new walls between our two countries," he said. "We will
never transform the Prut into a barrier." But that is just what Romania
is going to have to do if it joins the European Union. One of the
conditions of entry is that candidate countries must provide a secure
frontier to prevent illegal immigration.
That will mean Moldovans, ethnic Romanians or not, will need a passport
and visa to get into Romania. (DIVERS)

... AS MOLDOVA IS TO GRADUALLY INTRODUCE 'INTEGRATED HISTORY.'
CHISINAU - The new "integrated history" course will be gradually
introduced in Moldovan schools, Radio Free Europe reported. Fifty
schools are to introduce the new course as of 1 September this year.
Recently appointed Education Minister Valentin Beniuc has headed a team
tasked with replacing the currently taught "History of Romanians" with a
course of "integrated universal history", which is to focus on the
"history of Moldova" and the "history of the Moldovan people." Opponents
of the envisaged change in the curriculum say the measure is aimed at
eradicating the memory of Moldova's historic and cultural links with
Romania. (DIVERS)

FEATURE
HOLOCAUST MEMORIES DIM IN ROMANIA
By Marian Chiriac for Institute for War and Peace Reporting
(www.iwpr.net)
Sixty years on from the Second World War, Romania remains confused about
the part it played in deporting and killing Jews. A recent scandal in
which President Ion Iliescu was forced to retract controversial remarks
about the Holocaust underlines the ambiguous feelings of many Romanians.
�The Holocaust was not unique to the Jewish population in Europe. Many
others, including Poles, died in the same way,� said Iliescu in an
interviewed with a leading Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz in July. �In the
Romania of the Nazi period, Jews and communists were treated equally.�
He recounted how his father � a communist � died shortly after being
released from a concentration camp, and insisted that Romania was just
too poor to consider paying out restitution to Jews dispossessed of
their property. "Does that mean the wretched Romanian citizen of today
has to pay for what happened then?� he asked. �I don't find that
appropriate." Iliescu�s comment that the Holocaust was not unique
sparked a diplomatic protest from Israel, which demanded an apology for
his �miserable statement� � and duly received one. At the same time, the
president admitted that his government had been wrong when the previous
month it denied that Holocaust events took place in Romania as well as
elsewhere.
The government�s June 13 declaration was all the more embarrassing
because, only the day before, it had opened its archives to the
Washington-based Holocaust Memorial Museum. Although the retractions
succeeded in defusing some of the anger of outraged historians, Jewish
communities abroad and Israel itself, the scandal re-ignites fundamental
questions about why perceptions of the country�s past differ so widely.
Adrian Cioroianu, a young historian from the University of Bucharest,
believes that many Romanians, including the country's political elite,
have an incomplete rather than prejudiced view about what happened
during the Second World War. �Iliescu - like most of the population here
- is not anti-Semitic,� said Cioroianu. �But they belong to a generation
which is not very well informed about the events of the war. Some
perceptions of Romanian behaviour during the war are mere illusions and
have nothing to do with what actually happened." Broadly speaking, there
are two versions of Romania�s wartime history. That of some nationalists
is that despite an unfortunate alliance with Hitler, Romania managed to
save many of its Jews from deportation through the intervention of
wartime leader Ion Antonescu. This diverges sharply with the story
documented by historians � the killing of hundreds of thousands of Jews
from Romania as well as parts of the Soviet Union it occupied.
According to Andrei Oisteanu, a researcher into the history and
traditions of local Jewish communities, the facts about what happened to
the Jews are available - the problem is that people prefer not to know
about them. "Historians have undoubtedly documented the Holocaust on
Romanian territory, starting with the anti-Jewish legislation of the
early Thirties and ending in mass deportations and pogroms, including
one in June 1941 in the north-eastern city of Iasi, where up to 12,000
people are believed to have died,� he told IWPR. �The problem is that
Romanians appear largely indifferent to their wartime past, or else are
unable to come to terms with this unpleasant chapter in the country�s
history." Romania is not the only East European country to have found it
difficult to come to terms with its past. According to Cioroianu, the
discussion about the Holocaust started a decade later here than in
Hungary and Poland. �The situation is probably different because of
[Communist-era leader] Nicolae Ceausescu's national-communist
inheritance, and a tradition of nationalistic propaganda that can be
traced back to the 19th century," he said. �For Romanians to understand
their past, the country's historians must present an accurate
examination of the events that took place, and they need to become more
rational and self-critical.� But telling the truth to the public means
finding better ways of presenting history, especially to younger
generations. Romanian school textbooks remained largely unchanged from
the end of the communist period until 1999, when study of the Holocaust
became a compulsory part of the history curriculum.
At the same time, the government gave teachers more leeway in choosing
what history books to use. "However, some of the new high-school
textbooks do not mention Romania�s involvement in the Holocaust at all,�
said Lia Benjamin of the Centre for the Study of Jewish History in
Bucharest. �Others, while speaking of atrocities committed during
Antonescu's rule, estimate the number of victims [only] in tens of
thousands without clearly stating who was responsible for the killings."
There are signs that official attitudes are now changing, given the work
that needs to be done to meet the standards for NATO and European Union
membership. Last year, the government passed laws banning expressions of
fascism or racial hatred. And earlier this month, Prime Minister Adrian
Nastase announced plans to increase awareness of the Holocaust by
setting up an international commission to examine the country's wartime
role and instituting official observance of Holocaust Day. Cioroianu
believes that even with anti-racist legislation in place, Romanians�
views of the Holocaust will only change if there is a more critical
public debate about the past. �From now on, it is the duty of
historians, intellectuals and the media to change Romanian�s perception
of the past,� he said. (DIVERS)

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