SLOVAKIA

As in previous years, the 2023 Human Rights Country practices report for Slovakia fails to even mention the existence of the country’s largest national minority, the 450,000 Hungarian community.

Missing again from the relevant sections:

g. Property Seizure and Restitution

Mention that since 2009 the discredited WWII-era Benes Decrees are being applied with the Slovak Land Fund confiscating lands – without compensation – solely from those of ethnic Hungarian or German ancestry.

Section 6. Discrimination and Societal Abuses – Systemic Racial or Ethnic Violence and Discrimination

If there ever was an example of systemic ethnic discrimination that checked all the boxes, it is Benes Decree No. 104 /1945, which had as its sole purpose to punish innocent people.

Yet, the State Department inexplicably fails to call out Slovakia on this human rights violation that several media outlets, NGOs, the Slovak Ministry of Justice, the Supreme Court of Slovakia, and the European Court of Human Rights have all confirmed exists.

UKRAINE

No specific mention is made of the ethnic Hungarian minority which lives in the Zakarpattia-Kárpátalja Region and numbered 156,000 according to the last census data. One section states:

Section 6. Discrimination and Societal Abuses – Systemic Racial or Ethnic Violence and Discrimination

“In September, parliament amended the Law on National Minorities, permitting national minorities to broadcast, advertise, and hold public events in their native languages in their communities of residence. In December, parliament adopted further amendments to national minority legislation, giving national minorities the right to study in secondary schools in their native language if it was an EU language; under the new law, classes on Ukrainian language, Ukrainian literature, the history of Ukraine, and the defense of Ukraine had to be taught in Ukrainian.” [page 45]

• The Report accurately notes amendments were made to the Law on National Minorities. However, it fails to note that these are still insufficient and that since 2015, every law adopted by the country on education, language and other rights for ethnic minorities has eliminated existing rights. The amendments had to be brought because even the new law, adopted in 2022 to comply with EU accession criteria, was in fact backsliding.
• The Report fails to mention the negative impact on the community when local officials removed Hungarian symbols, inscriptions and heads of institutions in January 2023.

ROMANIA

Section 6. Discrimination and Societal Abuses – Systemic Racial or Ethnic Violence and Discrimination

The Report accurately reiterates the same text from 2022:

“Ethnic Hungarians reported discrimination related mainly to the use of the Hungarian language. Ethnic Hungarians reported the government did not enforce the law stating ethnic minorities were entitled to interact with local governments in their native language in localities where a minority constituted at least 20 percent of the population. There were reports local authorities did not enforce the law requiring localities with at least a 20 percent minority population to have bilingual road signs.” [page 31]

• There is no mention, however, of the ongoing anti-Hungarian, anti-Roma and antisemitic campaigns by far-right extremist political forces, namely George Simion’s AUR and Diana Sosoaca’s SOS Romania parties. Years of vandalism and desecration of the Úzvölgy Hungarian military cemetery provoked by Romanian extremists is again not mentioned.

g. Property Seizure and Restitution

While the excerpt from this section on the single most important human rights violation in Romania is accurate, it is too general and lacks the specific data on claims which the 2022 report did contain and which HHRF regularly provides the State Department.

“The number of properties returned involving churches and national minorities was disproportionately low. There were numerous disputes over church buildings and property the Romanian Orthodox Church failed to return to the Greek Catholic Church, despite court orders to do so. The government did not take effective action to return churches confiscated by the post-World War II communist government. There were lengthy delays in processing claims related to properties owned by national minority communities. Under the law there was a presumption of abusive transfer that applied to restitution of private property but not to religious or communal property. In many cases, documents attesting to the abusive transfer of such properties to state ownership no longer existed. Religious and national minorities were not entitled to compensation for nationalized buildings that were demolished.” [page 10]

The subsequently issued 2023 International Religious Freedom Report does contain detailed information, but this also belongs in the general country practices report.

Please follow and like us: