1. From Rhetoric to Integration
Nationalist issues have been traditionally an important part of Romanian politics. Pre-communist Romania was a parliamentary democracy but ethnic minorities were a weak area in its social policy. After the fall of communism newly-found freedoms of speech and expression have facilitated the emergence of radical nationalism which had formerly been suppressed by authorities for more than four decades.
During the first Ion Iliescu administration (22 December 1989 29 November 1996) the reform communists in power used lack of national unity as a justification for their inability to promote real reforms in the economy.
However with the November 1996 defeat of the Communist Party (recast as a social democrat party) by a pro-Western coalition of parties led by the Bucharest University professor Emil Constantinescu the long road from passive rhetoric to true integration seemed to have come to an end.
The Constantinescu administration (29 November 1996 20 December 2000) started a more vigorous implementation of change in the traditional policies regarding minorities in order to align Romania to the Western standards of protection.
The article examines the efforts of the first two post-communist administrations (1989-2000) to improve their policy on minorities in a country where minority rights have remained an issue.
2. Historical Background
Minorities represent 11 percent of Romanias 20-million people including 1.2 million ethnic Hungarians 600000 Gypsies (Rroma) 35000 Germans and 5000 Jews.
Ethnic Hungarians form one-third of the population in Transylvania a former province of Austria- Hungary that reverted to Romania after World War I and have been seen traditionally by Romanians as a particularly troublesome minority.
Gypsies were released from servitude during 1855 and 1856 but they continue to be considered second-class citizens by many.
Germans used to be a robust community of almost 800000 in inter-war Romania but the community has fallen to about 35000 in recent years.
It is worth mentioning that during its monarchic period (1866-1947) Romania used to be ruled by a German dynasty of kings while the countrys current president and former mayor of the Transylvanian city of Sibiu Klaus Werner Iohannis (also spelled Johannis) is also an ethnic German.
The Jewish population in inter-war Romania was also over 700000 but it decreased dramatically during and after the World War 2 to less than 5000 in the recent years. Anti-Semitism which emerged more visibly after 1866 was initially equated with religious intolerance but later became fueled by economic and political factors and continues to be a problem nowadays.
Historically various minority groups have faced ethnic and religious intolerance and since the mid-nineteenth century they have voiced constantly their dissatisfaction with the traditionalist nationalist policies practiced by the local authorities.
When the communist dictator Nicolae Ceauescu was overthrown and executed on December 25 1989 Romanias record on human and minority rights was far from satisfactory.
For example Ceauescus so-called Romanianization policy" attempted to assimilate minorities by merging schools belonging to minorities with Romanian ones and by forcibly relocating minorities through job layoffs and reassignments to predominantly Romanian areas. Romanians meanwhile were relocated to areas that were once dominated by minorities.
In 1988 in order to avoid a full-scale investigation of his regime by the U.S. Congress Ceauescu unilaterally renounced the Most Favored Nation (MFN) status.
In early 1989 he refused to sign an agreement on human rights with the Council for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE later OSCE). Later that year he placed the national representative to the UN Commission on Human Rights Dumitru Mazilu under house arrest because Mazilu had released a devastating report on abuses in Romania.
3. Nationalism and Rhetoric
The anti-communist revolution in December 1989 that led to the fall of Ceauescu began in the city of Timioara as a spontaneous local revolt in reaction to the repeated government abuses against the Hungarian pastor Laszlo Toks.
Interestingly enough President Klaus Iohannis announced in 2016 that he decided to withdraw the Order of the Star of Romania distinction from Laszlo Toks since the former Romanian-born ethnic Hungarian pastor was in the meantime elected as a member of the European Parliament for the Fidesz nationalist party in Hungary.
The manner in which citizens of all ethnicities cooperated in ousting Ceauescu raised hopes about the future of inter-ethnic relations but the initial efforts to improve these relations floundered.
In 1990 Ion Iliescu a reform communist was elected on a platform that included promises to improve Romanias minorities policy but his efforts to do so in some cases increased ethnic tensions.
For example Iliescu attempted to reintroduce the Hungarian language into schools in the areas populated with Hungarians such as Transylvania but this was done in a way that antagonized ethnic Romanians in the region.
In the Transylvanian counties of Cluj and Mure the Romanian students were barred without notice from certain schools in the middle of the academic year. Eventually complaints from the Romanian community led the government to back away from some of its more ambitious promises.
The delay irritated the Hungarian community who began holding demonstrations calling for school segregation.
In March 1990 ethnic tensions were exacerbated in the city of Trgu Mure when several thousand Hungarians celebrated Hungarys national holiday by draping Hungarian flags on city buildings.
Many Romanians construed that as a deliberate provocation and violent clashes broke out in the city and the neighboring areas resulting in five dead (three ethnic Hungarians and two ethnic Romanians) and 278 injured; see VIDEO here.
In the city of Cluj-Napoca the local council members many of them from the ultra-nationalist Romanian National Unity Party (PUNR) took a series of aggressive actions against the Hungarian community. They evicted some ethnic organizations and media agencies from their premises and banned the use of bilingual signs.
During the June 1990 mineriad" the pro-Iliescu miners came to Bucharest to neutralize the anti-Iliescu protesters but they also organized an anti-Rroma pogrom in some neighborhoods of the countrys capital.
In November 1991 the newly adopted constitution stated that Romania is a unitary state and this offended Hungarians who thought this implied intolerance.
In February 1993 Romania became an associate member of the European Community. In order to implement the European Convention for the Protection of National Minorities the government created the Council for National Minorities to investigate complaints and stimulate cooperation among different governmental departments dealing with minorities issues.
The Council initiated several projects to improve the situation of Gypsies (Rroma) including job training programs and experimental classes in the Rromani language. Much work remains to be done for this community however where nomadism and crime rates are high.
Between December 1989 and November 1996 over 20 incidents have been reported in which ethnic Romanians and Hungarians retaliated against the Gypsies for alleged offenses that had gone unpunished by local authorities. Retaliation used to take the form of arson home demolition lynching and expulsion.
The Council also approved decisions on such contentious issues as bilingual signs and use of minority languages for Romanian history and geography but the government failed to implement them due to pressure from nationalist groups. As a result the representatives of the Hungarian Democratic Federation of Romania (UDMR the party of ethnic Hungarians) claiming lack of substantive progress withdrew from the Council.
Anti-Semitism had been largely absent in Romania during the communist era. This was also the result of a massive emigration of approximately 350000 Romanian Jews during and after the World War II which reduced the Jewish community to about 5000 people.
After 1989 this sentiment also called anti-Semitism without Jews" - was resurrected after 1989 by nationalist-Communist tabloids like Europa and Politica.
Since then constant attempts have been made to rehabilitate Marshal Ion Antonescu glorified in Romania as an anti-Soviet hero but responsible for deporting tens of thousands of Jews and Gypsies to the concentration camps in Transnistria a region under Romanian administration from the fall of 1941 until the spring of 1944.
Although President Iliescu had made formal statements against anti-Semitic press and actions this was apparently pure rhetoric since he had not backed his statements up with real progress.
In September 1995 for example the parliament initiated a draft law on the restitution of property confiscated from Jews by the communist regime but eventually the draft law was abandoned.
Moreover before the November 1996 elections President Iliescu and his Social Democracy Party of Romania (PDSR) had allied with the left-nationalists and campaigned for the votes of ethnic Romanians by using racist slogans about the Hungarian menace and criticizing the Jewish descent of some of their political opponents.
However in October 2004 toward the end of his second administration (20 December 2000 20 December 2004) the government recognized a Holocaust took place on Romanian territory and held its first Holocaust Day.
In September 1996 Romania and Hungary signed a basic treaty in order to reduce ethnic tensions in Transylvania. In spite of some vocal opposition from nationalist circles in both countries the treaty was deemed as a necessary and acceptable step for joining NATO and the EU. Under the treaty Hungary agreed to abandon territorial claims in Romania while Romania agreed to promote local and cultural autonomy for its ethnic Hungarians in accordance with European standards.
Despite some efforts to improve the status of minorities in Romania the Iliescu administration was still unable to promote national unity. Indeed more often than not these efforts were mere rhetoric that was quickly abandoned.
4. Developing Ethnic Integration
As a result of the November 1996 elections the reform communists headed by Iliescu and his PDSR (later called PSD) lost power in favor of a pro-Western coalition of parties. The coalition included conservative Christian Democrats and National Liberals (allied in the Romanian Democratic Convention/CDR) Social Democrats (USD) and for the first time the ethnic Hungarian party (UDMR). The new President Professor Emil Constantinescu of CDR promised that he would be a president for all Romanians.
During the Constantinescu administration the UDMR controlled both the Tourism Ministry and the Ministry on National Minorities. The new parliament began a process of promoting minority languages in education and extending local autonomy in areas with a high percentage of ethnic minorities.
The agenda included discussions on property restitution or compensation to Hungarian churches in Romania and the Jewish community.
The administration initiated exploratory discussions with Romanian-Jewish leaders from Israel in order to promote legislation restoring their former assets and real estate confiscated during communism.
The CDR Prime Minister Victor Ciorbea and the USD heads of the departments of foreign affairs and national defense each paid visits to Budapest in order to improve bilateral relations and foster support for Romania joining NATO and the EU.
Also as a sign of ethnic reconciliation President Constantinescu pardoned an ethnic Hungarian who had been sentenced in March 1990 to a 10-year imprisonment while in March 1997 the prime minister sent a message of unity to the participants on the Hungarian national holiday.
Despite criticism by the nationalist-communists who predicted the imminent disintegration of the country the governments actions gained popular support.
Ethnic clashes continued to occur although sporadically. In 1998 an incident occurred in the Mure county village of Valea Largă which resulted in one dead Rroma and burning the houses of a Gypsy family by several ethnic Hungarian locals.
Some Rroma members of parliament criticized the legislative amendments that favored the Hungarian community demanding similar treatment for their community such as bilingual signs in villages where Gypsies live.
The Gypsies however are not well organized politically and in fact many Rroma declare themselves as ethnic Romanians in order to avoid the pariah label. Thus the Gypsies are divided even among themselves in how to fight for minority rights.
Between November 1996 and December 2000 the ethnic dtente impacted considerably upon the ideology of some fervent nationalist parties such as PUNR which experienced a visible decline in popularity and attempted to redefine its image.
Practicing an open-door policy toward minorities the Constantinescu administration addressed a call to German migrs to come back and invest in Romania in exchange for returning their former assets and properties in Transylvania.
Romania tried also to offer more effective protection to minorities by cooperating with and requesting assistance of Western monitoring bodies such as the OSCE.
In April 1997 talks were held between Romanias Foreign Minister Adrian Severin and the OSCE High Commissioner for National Minorities Max van der Stoel.
Throughout his four-year term President Constantinescu struggled with a slow implementation of privatization due to excessive bureaucracy.
In 1999 his administration had to cope with yet another mineriad" and a political crisis between the parties of the ruling coalition.
In 2000 Romania was damaged by a drought and eventually Constantinescus mandate ended with little short-term progress in economic privatization.
However his administration showed more dedication and strong commitment to defending human and minority rights than the previous one. This strengthened internal unity and improved the countrys image internationally.
As a result Romania has gained more credibility in the West and increased its chances of being adopted into the large family of democratic nations in the years that followed.
NOTE - The article was published previously in HUMAN RIGHTS BRIEF.
Tiberiu Dianu has published several books and a host of articles in law politics and post-communist societies. He currently lives and works in Washington DC and can be followed on MEDIUM.
*****
1. From Rhetoric to Integration
Nationalist issues have been traditionally an important part of Romanian politics. Pre-communist Romania was a parliamentary democracy but ethnic minorities were a weak area in its social policy. After the fall of communism newly-found freedoms of speech and expression have facilitated the emergence of radical nationalism which had formerly been suppressed by authorities for more than four decades.
During the first Ion Iliescu administration (22 December 1989 29 November 1996) the reform communists in power used lack of national unity as a justification for their inability to promote real reforms in the economy.
However with the November 1996 defeat of the Communist Party (recast as a social democrat party) by a pro-Western coalition of parties led by the Bucharest University professor Emil Constantinescu the long road from passive rhetoric to true integration seemed to have come to an end.
The Constantinescu administration (29 November 1996 20 December 2000) started a more vigorous implementation of change in the traditional policies regarding minorities in order to align Romania to the Western standards of protection.
The article examines the efforts of the first two post-communist administrations (1989-2000) to improve their policy on minorities in a country where minority rights have remained an issue.
2. Historical Background
Minorities represent 11 percent of Romanias 20-million people including 1.2 million ethnic Hungarians 600000 Gypsies (Rroma) 35000 Germans and 5000 Jews.
Ethnic Hungarians form one-third of the population in Transylvania a former province of Austria- Hungary that reverted to Romania after World War I and have been seen traditionally by Romanians as a particularly troublesome minority.
Gypsies were released from servitude during 1855 and 1856 but they continue to be considered second-class citizens by many.
Germans used to be a robust community of almost 800000 in inter-war Romania but the community has fallen to about 35000 in recent years.
It is worth mentioning that during its monarchic period (1866-1947) Romania used to be ruled by a German dynasty of kings while the countrys current president and former mayor of the Transylvanian city of Sibiu Klaus Werner Iohannis (also spelled Johannis) is also an ethnic German.
The Jewish population in inter-war Romania was also over 700000 but it decreased dramatically during and after the World War 2 to less than 5000 in the recent years. Anti-Semitism which emerged more visibly after 1866 was initially equated with religious intolerance but later became fueled by economic and political factors and continues to be a problem nowadays.
Historically various minority groups have faced ethnic and religious intolerance and since the mid-nineteenth century they have voiced constantly their dissatisfaction with the traditionalist nationalist policies practiced by the local authorities.
When the communist dictator Nicolae Ceauescu was overthrown and executed on December 25 1989 Romanias record on human and minority rights was far from satisfactory.
For example Ceauescus so-called Romanianization policy" attempted to assimilate minorities by merging schools belonging to minorities with Romanian ones and by forcibly relocating minorities through job layoffs and reassignments to predominantly Romanian areas. Romanians meanwhile were relocated to areas that were once dominated by minorities.
In 1988 in order to avoid a full-scale investigation of his regime by the U.S. Congress Ceauescu unilaterally renounced the Most Favored Nation (MFN) status.
In early 1989 he refused to sign an agreement on human rights with the Council for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE later OSCE). Later that year he placed the national representative to the UN Commission on Human Rights Dumitru Mazilu under house arrest because Mazilu had released a devastating report on abuses in Romania.
3. Nationalism and Rhetoric
The anti-communist revolution in December 1989 that led to the fall of Ceauescu began in the city of Timioara as a spontaneous local revolt in reaction to the repeated government abuses against the Hungarian pastor Laszlo Toks.
Interestingly enough President Klaus Iohannis announced in 2016 that he decided to withdraw the Order of the Star of Romania distinction from Laszlo Toks since the former Romanian-born ethnic Hungarian pastor was in the meantime elected as a member of the European Parliament for the Fidesz nationalist party in Hungary.
The manner in which citizens of all ethnicities cooperated in ousting Ceauescu raised hopes about the future of inter-ethnic relations but the initial efforts to improve these relations floundered.
In 1990 Ion Iliescu a reform communist was elected on a platform that included promises to improve Romanias minorities policy but his efforts to do so in some cases increased ethnic tensions.
For example Iliescu attempted to reintroduce the Hungarian language into schools in the areas populated with Hungarians such as Transylvania but this was done in a way that antagonized ethnic Romanians in the region.
In the Transylvanian counties of Cluj and Mure the Romanian students were barred without notice from certain schools in the middle of the academic year. Eventually complaints from the Romanian community led the government to back away from some of its more ambitious promises.
The delay irritated the Hungarian community who began holding demonstrations calling for school segregation.
In March 1990 ethnic tensions were exacerbated in the city of Trgu Mure when several thousand Hungarians celebrated Hungarys national holiday by draping Hungarian flags on city buildings.
Many Romanians construed that as a deliberate provocation and violent clashes broke out in the city and the neighboring areas resulting in five dead (three ethnic Hungarians and two ethnic Romanians) and 278 injured; see VIDEO here.
In the city of Cluj-Napoca the local council members many of them from the ultra-nationalist Romanian National Unity Party (PUNR) took a series of aggressive actions against the Hungarian community. They evicted some ethnic organizations and media agencies from their premises and banned the use of bilingual signs.
During the June 1990 mineriad" the pro-Iliescu miners came to Bucharest to neutralize the anti-Iliescu protesters but they also organized an anti-Rroma pogrom in some neighborhoods of the countrys capital.
In November 1991 the newly adopted constitution stated that Romania is a unitary state and this offended Hungarians who thought this implied intolerance.
In February 1993 Romania became an associate member of the European Community. In order to implement the European Convention for the Protection of National Minorities the government created the Council for National Minorities to investigate complaints and stimulate cooperation among different governmental departments dealing with minorities issues.
The Council initiated several projects to improve the situation of Gypsies (Rroma) including job training programs and experimental classes in the Rromani language. Much work remains to be done for this community however where nomadism and crime rates are high.
Between December 1989 and November 1996 over 20 incidents have been reported in which ethnic Romanians and Hungarians retaliated against the Gypsies for alleged offenses that had gone unpunished by local authorities. Retaliation used to take the form of arson home demolition lynching and expulsion.
The Council also approved decisions on such contentious issues as bilingual signs and use of minority languages for Romanian history and geography but the government failed to implement them due to pressure from nationalist groups. As a result the representatives of the Hungarian Democratic Federation of Romania (UDMR the party of ethnic Hungarians) claiming lack of substantive progress withdrew from the Council.
Anti-Semitism had been largely absent in Romania during the communist era. This was also the result of a massive emigration of approximately 350000 Romanian Jews during and after the World War II which reduced the Jewish community to about 5000 people.
After 1989 this sentiment also called anti-Semitism without Jews" - was resurrected after 1989 by nationalist-Communist tabloids like Europa and Politica.
Since then constant attempts have been made to rehabilitate Marshal Ion Antonescu glorified in Romania as an anti-Soviet hero but responsible for deporting tens of thousands of Jews and Gypsies to the concentration camps in Transnistria a region under Romanian administration from the fall of 1941 until the spring of 1944.
Although President Iliescu had made formal statements against anti-Semitic press and actions this was apparently pure rhetoric since he had not backed his statements up with real progress.
In September 1995 for example the parliament initiated a draft law on the restitution of property confiscated from Jews by the communist regime but eventually the draft law was abandoned.
Moreover before the November 1996 elections President Iliescu and his Social Democracy Party of Romania (PDSR) had allied with the left-nationalists and campaigned for the votes of ethnic Romanians by using racist slogans about the Hungarian menace and criticizing the Jewish descent of some of their political opponents.
However in October 2004 toward the end of his second administration (20 December 2000 20 December 2004) the government recognized a Holocaust took place on Romanian territory and held its first Holocaust Day.
In September 1996 Romania and Hungary signed a basic treaty in order to reduce ethnic tensions in Transylvania. In spite of some vocal opposition from nationalist circles in both countries the treaty was deemed as a necessary and acceptable step for joining NATO and the EU. Under the treaty Hungary agreed to abandon territorial claims in Romania while Romania agreed to promote local and cultural autonomy for its ethnic Hungarians in accordance with European standards.
Despite some efforts to improve the status of minorities in Romania the Iliescu administration was still unable to promote national unity. Indeed more often than not these efforts were mere rhetoric that was quickly abandoned.
4. Developing Ethnic Integration
As a result of the November 1996 elections the reform communists headed by Iliescu and his PDSR (later called PSD) lost power in favor of a pro-Western coalition of parties. The coalition included conservative Christian Democrats and National Liberals (allied in the Romanian Democratic Convention/CDR) Social Democrats (USD) and for the first time the ethnic Hungarian party (UDMR). The new President Professor Emil Constantinescu of CDR promised that he would be a president for all Romanians.
During the Constantinescu administration the UDMR controlled both the Tourism Ministry and the Ministry on National Minorities. The new parliament began a process of promoting minority languages in education and extending local autonomy in areas with a high percentage of ethnic minorities.
The agenda included discussions on property restitution or compensation to Hungarian churches in Romania and the Jewish community.
The administration initiated exploratory discussions with Romanian-Jewish leaders from Israel in order to promote legislation restoring their former assets and real estate confiscated during communism.
The CDR Prime Minister Victor Ciorbea and the USD heads of the departments of foreign affairs and national defense each paid visits to Budapest in order to improve bilateral relations and foster support for Romania joining NATO and the EU.
Also as a sign of ethnic reconciliation President Constantinescu pardoned an ethnic Hungarian who had been sentenced in March 1990 to a 10-year imprisonment while in March 1997 the prime minister sent a message of unity to the participants on the Hungarian national holiday.
Despite criticism by the nationalist-communists who predicted the imminent disintegration of the country the governments actions gained popular support.
Ethnic clashes continued to occur although sporadically. In 1998 an incident occurred in the Mure county village of Valea Largă which resulted in one dead Rroma and burning the houses of a Gypsy family by several ethnic Hungarian locals.
Some Rroma members of parliament criticized the legislative amendments that favored the Hungarian community demanding similar treatment for their community such as bilingual signs in villages where Gypsies live.
The Gypsies however are not well organized politically and in fact many Rroma declare themselves as ethnic Romanians in order to avoid the pariah label. Thus the Gypsies are divided even among themselves in how to fight for minority rights.
Between November 1996 and December 2000 the ethnic dtente impacted considerably upon the ideology of some fervent nationalist parties such as PUNR which experienced a visible decline in popularity and attempted to redefine its image.
Practicing an open-door policy toward minorities the Constantinescu administration addressed a call to German migrs to come back and invest in Romania in exchange for returning their former assets and properties in Transylvania.
Romania tried also to offer more effective protection to minorities by cooperating with and requesting assistance of Western monitoring bodies such as the OSCE.
In April 1997 talks were held between Romanias Foreign Minister Adrian Severin and the OSCE High Commissioner for National Minorities Max van der Stoel.
Throughout his four-year term President Constantinescu struggled with a slow implementation of privatization due to excessive bureaucracy.
In 1999 his administration had to cope with yet another mineriad" and a political crisis between the parties of the ruling coalition.
In 2000 Romania was damaged by a drought and eventually Constantinescus mandate ended with little short-term progress in economic privatization.
However his administration showed more dedication and strong commitment to defending human and minority rights than the previous one. This strengthened internal unity and improved the countrys image internationally.
As a result Romania has gained more credibility in the West and increased its chances of being adopted into the large family of democratic nations in the years that followed.
NOTE - The article was published previously in HUMAN RIGHTS BRIEF.
Tiberiu Dianu has published several books and a host of articles in law politics and post-communist societies. He currently lives and works in Washington DC and can be followed on MEDIUM.
*****
