You may have read recent articles in the New York Times and Washington Post that question the veracity of the unprecedented assault against the ethnic Hungarian community in Subcarpathia, Ukraine. HHRF has written an objection to the Editor of the New York Times and we urge you to write as well, no matter how briefly. Ongoing discrimination, scapegoating and threats to the lives of ethnic Hungarians are well documented and verified.

Here are some examples you can refer to:

• Numerous  illegal activities and undemocratic policies surrounded the July 2019 parliamentary elections in which the Hungarian minority community lost its sole representative in the Rada. There is now no one at the national level to speak up for the community.

• In April 2019, the Ukrainian president signed a law curtailing the Hungarian minority’s use of their mother tongue, in violation of their own constitution.

• No student enrolled in the Mukachevo/Munkács State University’s Hungarian Department in September 2019. The country’s anti-Hungarian, coupled with unfair entrance exams and changes to the education law, have driven Hungarian language education into the ground.

• Billboards falsely labeling Hungarians “separatists” littered the Subcarpathian countryside in October 2018.

• In September 2018, the Ukrainian parliament’s website hosted a petition to deprive dual Ukrainian-Hungarian citizens of their citizenship and deport them.

• “There are no Hungarians living in Subcarpathia, only Ukrainians of Hungarian origin,” proclaimed the president of Subcarpathian State Administrative Office, Ihor Bondarenko, in October 2019.

• The headquarters of the Cultural Alliance of Hungarians in Subcarpathia (KMKSZ) in Uzghorod/Ungvár was firebombed in February 2018. The perpetrators have yet to be identified or charged.

• An extremist website, Myrotvorets, that in 2018 revealed the personal data of hundreds of ethnic Hungarians it deemed “enemies of the state” is still up and running.

Please stand up for human rights and submit comments to both newspapers.

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