1.6. Safety measures

2.3. Ethnic harassment of Hungarian nationals

According to the United Nations, „harassment is any improper and unwelcome conduct that might reasonably be expected or be perceived to cause offence or humiliation to another person. Harassment may take the form of words, gestures or actions which tend to annoy, alarm, abuse, demean, intimidate, belittle, humiliate or embarrass another or which create an intimidating, hostile or offensive environment.”

Ethnic harassment of the people belonging to the Hungarian minority is also an issue of utmost concern in Romania.

One of the negative cases in 2021 was that a Hungarian person faced constant harassment by her Romanian neighbour because of her ethnicity. According to the allegations of the Romanian neighbour, he called on his Hungarian neighbour several times because of the smell coming from her apartment, because of her cats. However, the biggest issue was the fact that the neighbour

An example of anti-Hungarian hate speech is the fact that a book entitled Parasitic Touranic Nations is widely available and even sponsored on Facebook by one of the biggest online bookshops in Romania

in case was Hungarian. He insulted her many times, saying „close the window, because you smell, „bozgor” („bozgor” is a derogatory term meaning „person without country”, frequently used by Romanian nationalists to refer to a Hungarian), „go to the Hungarians and create a community with the Hungarians, not with me! I am Romanian”.

According to another case in October, 2021, two Hungarian students were walking on the streets of Cluj-Napoca/Kolozsvár, where they were suddenly attacked, beaten and robbed. Based on their words, the perpetrators heard that they were speaking in Hungarian and this might have been the reason why the conflict began. After this incident, the injured parties went to the local police station to report the case and file a complaint against the perpetrators. To their surprise the police officers refused to provide a Hungarian-Romanian translator, even though they had the right to have one. Our organization filed a complaint to the National Council for Combatting Discrimination not only against the attackers, but also because of the conduct of the police officers.

It is unfortunate that these were not the last cases of the year. According to the story of a kindergarten teacher, she has been facing constant discrimination and harrassment by the kindergarten’s director because of her Hungarian origins.

Observations and recommendations: Discrimination and harassment started to be a constant problem in everyday life. Not only does this happen at one’s workplace or at different insitutions, but also in one’s private life, which is totally unacceptable.