(story to be published in tomorrow’s issue, March 10)
In the torment of domestic events (the budget vote, work on the European Union accession strategy, the new scandal in the coalition over the dismissal-resignation of the Defence minister), only a handful of people have noticed the Annual Report of the US State Department on the situation of human rights around the world, which also covers Romania. The lack of a serious debate on a document of such importance reveals how disconnected the authorities and the would-be-analysts are from a principle that, starting officially with the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia last year, is becoming day by day one of the primary motifs of talking, negotiation and intervention on the international stage, often questioning the principle of national sovereignty. Could the Bucharest officials have forgotten that Romania has been unable to become a full-fledged member of the Council of Europe until 1993, namely because of the lack of substantial protection for ethnic minorities? Or that the US has waited for long before awarding its coveted Most Favoured Nation clause to Romania for the very same reason? What is most interesting about the 1999 human rights report for Romania is that it completely lacks references to the Hungarian majority’s human rights and to religious freedom. The section on relations between the ethnic majority and minorities commends the initiatives to enforce the basic Romanian-Hungarian treaty and the provisions for education in the language of the Hungarian minority. We could not expect otherwise, since President Clinton himself last year repeatedly pointed at Romania as a positive instance of solving ethnic problems, when he spoke during the armed intervention in Kosovo. The major problem comes with the human rights for the gypsy minority. The section dedicated to this ethnic group begins with a confusion on its exact size; the State Department indicates the contradiction between data supplied by the Romanian Government, which reported 400,000 gypsies, and the European Commission, which placed its estimate at 1.1 million to 1.5 million. The section also presents the double discrimination the gypsies must face, both from the majority population, in the form of racial and ethnic exclusivity, and from authorities, particularly in the form of police abuse. One could have expected the State Department to point out the positive discrimination the Romanian Orthodox Church will enjoy when it gains the name of “National Church” in the draft Cults Law, and the obstacles the same law poses in establishing new confessions, when it demands a high numerical threshold, as if religious conscience were bound to numbers. But the problem of religious freedom in Romania has been seriously taxed before by a report submitted to US Congress by three senators. Last year’s visit by Pope John Paul II did not bring a democratic-liberal solution to the delimitation between the laic and the religious, the State and the Church, and the religious majority and minority. The failure to deal with such major dilemmas, which have shaken the West before being clarified, was seen last year during the Kosovo conflict, when in the minds of many officials and of the majority of the population was a genuine war of legitimacy, even an “ethnic war,” between supporting the NATO intervention, in view of the desire to join it, the awareness of Albanians’ suffering, and supporting the Serbs based on the mentality of “Orthodox unity.” Then, starting with Patriarch Teoctist, the Romanian Orthodox Church has had numerous official interventions in the name of peace. Unfortunately, church officials have not issued any press releases condemning the brutal intervention of the Russian Army in Chechnya. Probably because the Chechen war is not waged near the borders of Romania, or probably because of a false “spiritual brotherhood,” this time with the Russian Orthodoxy, those who have led the voices condemning NATO’s intervention in Yugoslavia are choosing to keep silent about the genocide and extermination of the Chechens by Russian forces. One thing should be noted: applying double standards, as they are called din political science, in assessing events that concern human rights, is a morally and politically condemning action, whether the issue is equal rights for Hungarians and gypsies, whether it is to condemn or not instances of genocide, or whether this is made individually, as a group, or as an institution.