Five decades of human rights advocacy, diplomacy, and community-building are condensed into twelve panels in the commemorative exhibition of the Hungarian Human Rights Foundation (HHRF), officially opened in Cluj (Kolozsvár) at the Bocskai House of Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania as part of the Hungarian Days of Cluj festival.
The exhibition was opened by Zsolt Szekeres, president of HHRF; Emese Latkóczy, the foundation’s executive director; and Loránt Vincze, Member of the European Parliament. The exhibition is on view at the Bocskai House from August 16 to 22. It offers both a historical overview and a record of fifty years of advocacy work.
In her opening remarks, Emese Latkóczy said it had been an almost impossible task to condense HHRF’s wide-ranging activities into twelve panels, since even a list of the thousands of people who have supported the foundation through their work and assistance would not have fit on them.
CRISTINA FODOR
The story told by the exhibition begins in the diaspora. Through the life of László Hámos, the first panels evoke the experience of emigration and dual identity. For Hungarian families who began new lives in the United States after the Second World War, assimilation and the passing on of their Hungarian heritage existed side by side. One of the formative experiences that later shaped Hámos’s human-rights advocacy was his 1965 trip to Transylvania.
In Romania in the 1970s, little reliable information about the Ceaușescu regime’s minority policies reached the West. Members of the younger generation of the Hungarian-American diaspora therefore collected and translated reports arriving from Transylvania and brought them to the attention of the American public and policymakers. In New York, in 1975–1976, this work led to the creation of the Committee for Human Rights in Rumania (CHRR), which, from 1984 onward, continued its activities under the name Hungarian Human Rights Foundation.
The following panels show how information-gathering developed into organized political advocacy. After the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, violations of minority rights increasingly became part of the international dialogue. On May 7, 1976, CHRR placed a full-page advertisement in The New York Times about the consequences of Romania’s minority policies, and the following day it organized a demonstration outside Romania’s mission to the United Nations. The organization subsequently built lasting relationships with American politicians and members of Congress.
The exhibition also devotes a section to the campaign, lasting more than a decade, in which HHRF urged Congress to consider Romania’s record on human and minority rights during the annual review of the country’s U.S. trade privileges. According to the exhibition, this process reached its peak in 1987, when Congress repeatedly came out in favor of suspending Romania’s preferential trade status.
HHRF’s work, however, was not limited to Transylvania. From the 1980s onward, the situation of Hungarians in Slovakia—particularly the case of Miklós Duray—also became part of the foundation’s international advocacy. The exhibition recalls the humanitarian aid efforts and cultural-heritage protection campaigns organized during the period of Romania’s village-destruction program. Through the stories of László Tőkés, Tom Lantos, and the Romanian revolution of 1989, it also presents the network that connected American policymakers, Transylvanian reformers, and diaspora activists.
ZSOLT SZEKERES: ABOVE ALL, THE EXHIBITION IS ABOUT PEOPLE
Zsolt Szekeres, president of HHRF, said the exhibition spans five decades devoted to “the defense of rights, the preservation of identity, and connecting Hungarian communities.” At the same time, he emphasized that above all the exhibition tells the story of people who created a new homeland for themselves while refusing to give up their Hungarian identity or their sense of responsibility toward Hungarian communities living in the Carpathian Basin.
The president guided those present through the main milestones in HHRF’s history: from Cold War-era information-gathering and lobbying in Washington to minority-rights advocacy in Slovakia; from humanitarian assistance to the political transformations of 1989; and then to institution-building after the fall of communism.
He also highlighted HHRF’s support for the establishment of Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, which he described as a major achievement in strengthening the Transylvanian Hungarian community intellectually and institutionally over the long term.
The historical narrative reaches the present with the Reconnect Hungary and Reconnect Transylvania programs, which aim to reconnect young North American Hungarians with their Hungarian roots.
According to Szekeres, one of the most important lessons of the past fifty years is that a relatively small but consistent and well-organized community was capable of influencing both international public opinion and political decision-making. HHRF’s history, therefore, is not simply a closed chapter of the past: defending rights and preserving identity remain responsibilities for every new generation.
EMESE LATKÓCZY: YOU CAN ALWAYS COUNT ON US
Emese Latkóczy recalled the foundation’s past decades in more personal terms. As she noted, HHRF was originally established under the name CHRR, and because of its history, Transylvania and the concerns of the Hungarian community in Romania have always occupied a particularly important place in its work.
For that reason, she described the Cluj-Napoca exhibition as the most important to her personally among this year’s anniversary exhibitions. Here, she said, there is no need for lengthy explanations of experiences that Transylvanian Hungarians and Hungarians living in the diaspora often understand from only a few words.
She summarized HHRF’s mission as building international sympathy and support for the aspirations of Hungarian minority communities and creating a network of relationships to which these communities can turn when necessary.
“You can always count on us,” she said.
In her speech, she also recalled a series of personal memories: the 1980 CSCE meeting in Madrid, when the official U.S. delegation asked HHRF representatives to compile a set of minority-rights demands; László Tőkés’s first encounter with HHRF’s office, which in reality was surprisingly modest; and occasions when representatives of RMDSZ [the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania] and HHRF staff sat down together at the negotiating table with Romanian political leaders.
Looking to the future, she said unity and cooperation would be decisive.
LORÁNT VINCZE: IN WASHINGTON IT IS NOT ENOUGH SIMPLY TO DESCRIBE THE PROBLEM
The third speaker, Loránt Vincze, is an RMDSZ Member of the European Parliament, a member of the European Parliament’s Committee on Constitutional Affairs, and president of the intergroup for Traditional Minorities, National Communities and Languages.
In his remarks, he described HHRF as a courageous, yet thoughtful and measured, defender of the human rights of Hungarian communities living outside Hungary. He particularly emphasized the often invisible work behind the foundation: the network of relationships extending into Washington government departments, congressional offices, diplomatic circles, and policy institutes.
He recalled working with HHRF on numerous occasions over the past decade and a half. During visits by RMDSZ delegations, as well as during his own trips in his former capacity as president of the Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN) and as a Member of the European Parliament, foundation staff frequently organized full days of meetings in Washington, including consultations at the State Department, meetings with senators and members of the House of Representatives, and discussions with policy think tanks.
According to Vincze, this work has produced both tangible and less visible results. He cited the restitution of church and community properties in Romania, continued American attention to individual minority-rights cases, and more detailed sections on minority rights in Romania in U.S. State Department human-rights reports as areas in which a sustained presence in Washington has made a significant difference.
He stressed that the purpose of these visits was not simply to “complain.” In addition to explaining violations of rights and problems involving the use of the mother tongue, education, or property restitution, it was always necessary to state clearly what they expected a particular American policymaker to do.
He recalled this as one of László Hámos’s most important piece of advice: for someone sitting across the negotiating table, the question is not only what the problem is, but also what they themselves can do to help solve it.
Vincze also addressed HHRF’s bipartisan network in Washington. In his view, such bipartisanship is essential in American politics if credible advocacy for Hungarian minority issues is to continue regardless of changes in political administrations.
He said HHRF’s strength lies not in dramatic gestures but in the “quiet, persistent work” it has carried out for five decades: negotiations, telephone calls, letters, and personal relationships, without which many Transylvanian and other Hungarian issues from across the Carpathian Basin would never have reached Washington.
The historical arc of the anniversary exhibition in Cluj stretches from Cold War-era human-rights campaigns, through institution-building after the fall of communism, to engaging the generations of the future.
Although the three speakers approached the subject from different perspectives, they all arrived at the same conclusion: the defense of minority rights is not a closed chapter of history, but an ongoing task that continues to require international connections, persistence, and cooperation.
Source: https://szabadsag.ro/article/otven-ev-magyar-kisebbsegi-jogok-szolgalataban

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