The Székely Figyelő Foundation has written to President Klaus Iohannis several times, indicating that minority rights are often violated in Romania. They asked him to call on state institutions to enforce language rights. The head of state passed the request on to the Ministry of the Interior, from where the notices were finally sent out. Now it's our turn to exercise our rights - declared civil rights defender Zsolt Árus.
The head of the Székely Figyelő Foundation, which fights to secure language rights, described steps that state institutions have taken in the past period to respect minority rights. As he said, last autumn and several times after that, they wrote letters to the president with the aim of informing him about the violations of law in the country.
They asked him to call on the local governments of all settlements where the share of a minority exceeds twenty percent to respect the legislation on the use of the language of that minority.
Furthermore, they asked the president to write to the prefect of every county where there is at least one such settlement, and call on them to regularly check the respect of language rights in public institutions, and if they find an anomaly somewhere, to impose a penalty on the head of the given institution.
Although Iohannis listed the relevant laws, he replied that this was not within his jurisdiction, but forwarded the request to the government. The Ministry of the Interior informed the Székely Figyelő Foundation that they had called on the prefects to ensure the observance of language rights. The foundation asked the prefects of the Transylvanian counties and Bákó county about this, and the answers confirmed it: all prefects, except for Temes county, confirmed that they had received the notice in writing, and they even did this and that as a result. The answers of the prefects were also published on the website of the Székely Figyelő Foundation.
From here on, it is our responsibility to decide what happens next. Because you can still contact different institutions in Romanian (even in Székelyföld), out of the consideration that you can move faster that way, or out of fear that if we do it in Hungarian, we will arouse dislike for ourselves and/or our cause.
But everyone can also print out and carry with them the ministerial notice and the response of the prefect of their county to our letter, and boldly use their mother tongue, and if you encounter resistance somewhere, show them.
In fact, anyone can do that if they notice an anomaly somewhere, they bring it to the attention of the prefect of their county. Or you can report this to the foundation so that it can take action
- said Árus.
Every right is worth as much as we use it. And all of us have the opportunity (but also the responsibility) to accustom (essentially re-accustom) the Transylvanian civil servants to using the Hungarian language
- stated the head of the Székely Figyelő Foundation.
Source: Székelyhon.ro
Cover image: Pestisracok.hu/illustráció
