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VIOLATION OF LINGUISTIC RIGHTS
1.9. Use of the Hungarian language in stores of multinational companies and financial institutions Members of the Hungarian community face linguistic and ethnic discrimination in their everyday life. Violation of language rights, humiliation and disrespect continue to be problems that affect people belonging to the Hungarian national minority working at certain stores of well-known multinational companies in Transylvania’s Szeklerland. Szeklerland is a historical region in Eastern Transylvania, composed of Covasna/Kovászna, Harghita/ Hargita and part of Mureș/Maros county, where the Hungarian community constitutes roughly 75% of the total population. Unfortunately, there are many stores and supermarkets operating in Szeklerland, where the management and Romanian staff have a negative, restrictive attitude towards the Hungarianspeaking employees. According to a case that took place in a store of a multinational company operating in Sfântu Gheorghe/Sepsiszentgyörgy, where the customers belong mostly to the Hungarian minority, the department manager had a strong discriminatory attitude towards the Hungarian-speaking employees. The manager forbade them to speak in Hungarian to the customers and even among themselves. Seven employees have given their resignition since the Romanian-speaking department manager was hired at the respective store because they could not tolerate such a discriminatory behaviour.
VIOLATION OF LINGUISTIC RIGHTS
same issue can be identified in the case of the smart cash registers, which do not provide a Hungarian menu. Moreover, even though certain bank ATMs provide menus in different foreign languages, some of them lack the Hungarian menu. Our association took the necessary measures, sending letters to the managers of these stores to solve the problem and pay more attention to the Hungarian employees and customers and we also filed complaints to the competent bodies.
Observations and recommendations: Any kind of manifestation of discrimination, intolerance and injustice targeting the Hugarians at their workplace is totally unacceptable, since legal provisions prohibit discrimination at the workplace. Due to the fact that Hungarian is one of the 20 legally accepted minority languages in Romania, Hungarianspeaking employees and customers should be free to use it whenever they want.
1.10. Anti-Hungarian sentiments at the protests against measures to combat the epidemic Anti-Hungarian manifestations are not uncommon on the part of different NGOs and the Romanian population in general. Last year, even protests against anti-epidemic measures turned into protests against Hungarians, where people showed disrespect and chanted hateful words against the Hungarian minority. As it is known, many protests against anti-epidemic measures were organized in several cities in the country in April 2021, which were coordinated by the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR). A crowd of nearly 400 people gathered in the center of Pitești in the same month to protest against the lockdown rules, the mandatory use of face masks and to demand freedom. In the first part of the protest the crowd protested against the restrictions and shouted slogans such as „Freedom!” and „Down with the Government!”, however, in the second part the crowd started chanting xenophobic slogans. The crowd also shouted the well-known „Out with the Hungarians from the country!” chant, which is frequently used at football matches. It is inexplicable why the crowd blamed the Hungarians for the current epidemiological situation and took the opportunity to incite to hatred against the Hungarian minority.
Discrimination and harassment occured at a retailer, when Hungarian employees were banned from using the Hungarian language in private conversations during their working hours
Furthermore, the management of some of the stores in a shopping mall operating in Sfântu Gheorghe/Sepsiszentgyörgy in Szeklerland do not pay attention to bilingual communication with the cutomers and the employees, they communicate with the customers exclusively in Romanian. Product tags, as well as address systems provide no information in Hungarian. The
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