Hun­gar­i­ans under pres­sure in Sub-Carpathia

An upset­ting doc­u­men­tary under the title Hun­gar­i­ans under pres­sure in Sub-Carpathia (in Hun­gar­i­an: Mag­yarok a prés alatt Kár­pá­talján), made in coop­er­a­tion by Nation­al Legal Defence Ser­vice (NLDS), a Hun­gar­i­an human rights watch­dog NGO, PestiS­rá­cok, a Hun­gar­i­an inves­tiga­tive news por­tal, and Asso­ci­a­tion of Nation­al Film­mak­ers, a Hun­gar­i­an film­mak­er NGO. The doc­u­men­tary is a col­lec­tion of the evi­dences referred in a mon­i­tor­ing report made by the NLDS on the seri­ous human rights vio­la­tions per­pe­trat­ed against 200,000 indige­nous Hun­gar­i­ans liv­ing in Sub-Carpathia, offi­cial­ly called as Zakarpat­tia Oblast of Ukraine.

Ukraine has failed the test in terms of human rights. Ukraine severe­ly vio­lates the rights of indige­nous Hun­gar­i­ans liv­ing in Sub-Carpathia; both in regard to their eth­nic minor­i­ty rights, and their per­son­al and com­mu­nal rights. More­over, as the obser­va­tion car­ried out by the NLDS has shown, there is ongo­ing lin­guis­tic geno­cide, a cer­tain pop­u­la­tion exchange is in progress, and eth­ni­cal cleans­ing is per­pe­trat­ed in Sub-Carpathia.

The sur­vey was car­ried out with the sup­port of the Hun­gar­i­an Coop­er­a­tion Fund and with­in a strate­gic part­ner­ship with PestiSrácok.hu. As a result of this sur­vey, an upset­ting doc­u­men­tary, “Mag­yarok a prés alatt Kár­pá­talján” (Hun­gar­i­ans under pres­sure in Sub-Carpathia) was pro­duced. The doc­u­men­tary pre­miered on 15 Decem­ber 2022 in Budapest, and it was avail­able first at PestiSrácok.hu por­tal and their YouTube-chan­nel. Since the pre­mier the film has been watched by 375,000 view­ers. Now the Eng­lish-sub­ti­tled ver­sion is also avail­able. The par­tic­i­pants in cre­at­ing the doc­u­men­tary film: Boglár­ka Mol­nár H., Angéla Füssy edi­tors and script writ­ers, Dávid Kertész script writer and data col­lec­tor, Lajos Almási cam­era­man, Nán­dor Kelec­sényi cam­era­man and edi­tor, Dániel Fer­kó and Pál Ober­frank nar­ra­tors, dr. Gau­di-Nagy Tamás legal con­trib­u­tor and expert. The film is direct­ed by Angéla Füssy.

The 200,000-strong Hun­gar­i­an com­mu­ni­ty liv­ing in Sub-Carpathia has become increas­ing­ly oppressed in recent years, with anti-Hun­gar­i­an atroc­i­ties being sys­tem­at­ic and exac­er­bat­ed by the Russ­ian-Ukrain­ian armed con­flict that broke out on 24 Feb­ru­ary 2022.

Sub-Carpathia was thou­sand year long the inte­gral part of Hun­gar­i­an King­dom but was torn away from the moth­er­land by the Treaty of Tri­anon. In the course of the sur­vey infor­ma­tion was col­lect­ed about the vio­la­tions of the indi­vid­ual and com­mu­nal rights of indige­nous Hun­gar­i­ans liv­ing in Sub-Carpathia that are to be pro­vid­ed to them, based on inter­na­tion­al agree­ments and also enshrined in law. The sur­vey brought extra­or­di­nary sit­u­a­tions and hard­ships. The data col­lec­tion had to be car­ried out by bear­ing in mind that the estab­lish­ment of such con­tact may result in life-threat­en­ing sit­u­a­tions for the data provider Sub-Carpathi­an Hun­gar­i­ans – and in a man­ner involv­ing utmost dis­cre­tion and cau­tion. Most of our inter­vie­wees did not want to go on record, even by off cam­era with a dis­tort­ed voice. That is why we had to change their main per­son­al data and the sto­ries with real con­tent were pre­sent­ed by others.

The shock­ing sto­ries that were told speak for them­selves and call for urgent inter­ven­tion in order to stop intim­i­da­tion of Hun­gar­i­ans in Sub-Carpathia. The NLDS’s human rights report of Sub-Carpathi­an Hun­gar­i­ans gives item­ized pre­sen­ta­tion sup­port­ed by evi­dences, with ref­er­ence to rel­e­vant leg­is­la­tion for all those vio­la­tions that are car­ried out by Ukrain­ian author­i­ties vis-a-vis Sub-Carpathi­an Hun­gar­i­ans. The effect of these human rights vio­la­tions is grave, sys­temic lin­guis­tic geno­cide and eth­nic cleans­ing, that, as a whole, pos­es a fatal threat for Sub-Carpathi­ans and their sur­vival as a nation­al com­mu­ni­ty. Since its pre­sen­ta­tion, the report has been updat­ed with the lat­est anti-Hun­gar­i­an actions and devel­op­ments in Sub-Carpathia.

The Hun­gar­i­an and Eng­lish ver­sion of the NLDS’s Report shall be pre­sent­ed in its cur­rent form this week with­in the frame of an inter­na­tion­al press con­fer­ence. The Hun­gar­i­an and Eng­lish ver­sion of the NLDS’s Report could be find here.

The Report also makes rec­om­men­da­tions for chang­ing this unsus­tain­able sit­u­a­tion in a reas­sur­ing way, with appro­pri­ate guar­an­tees and in line with proven, good Euro­pean mod­els. The Report on vio­la­tion of human rights of Hun­gar­i­ans liv­ing in Sub-Carpathia and the doc­u­men­tary film is being sent to the Gov­ern­ment of Hun­gary, Gov­ern­ment of Ukraine, to the Coun­cil of Europe, to the organs of the Euro­pean Union (Com­mis­sion, Euro­pean Par­lia­ment), to the Orga­ni­za­tion for Secu­ri­ty and Co-oper­a­tion in Europe and to the com­pe­tent organs of the UN. The aim with this doc­u­men­tary and Report is to pro­mote the pro­tec­tion of the rights of the Sub-Carpathi­an Hun­gar­i­ans, and to advance that Ukraine imme­di­ate­ly stops the restric­tions and depri­va­tions of rights that affect the Sub-Carpathi­an Hun­gar­i­ans, and guar­an­tees them the indi­vid­ual and com­mu­nal rights that mem­bers of nation­al minori­ties are enti­tled to, the degree of self-deter­mi­na­tion need­ed by them, self-gov­er­nance and the unhin­dered acqui­si­tion and exer­cise of Hun­gar­i­an cit­i­zen­ship and the liv­ing con­di­tions for Sub-Carpathi­an Hun­gar­i­ans to pros­per in their ancient homeland.

YOU CAN REACH THE COMPLETE REPORT HERE.

Source: pestis​ra​cok​.hu