of signs and monuments

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.

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 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.

In the past years demonstrations against COVID restrictions and vaccination have often reflected antiHungarian sentiments, given that the anti-vaccination political party, the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR) is also strongly anti-Hungarian

Observations and recommendations: Spreading hatred and intolerance even at protest that concern both the Romanian- and Hungarian-speaking population is totally unacceptable. It is very worrying that such anti-Hungarian statements were made at the protests organized by a parliamentary party and that there is a search for scapegoats during the epidemic, which is given an ethnic tone due to the fact that anti-Hungarian rhetoric is often present in the discourse of people protesting against anti-epidemic measures.

2. ETHNIC DISCRIMINATION

According to the United Nations, „discrimination is any unfair treatment or arbitrary distinction based on a person’s race, sex, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability, age, language, social origin or other status. Discrimination may be an isolated event affecting one person or a group of persons similarly situated, or may manifest itself through harassment or abuse of authority.” Ethnic discrimination is still a persisting problem in Romania, which affects the Hungarian minority, too. It occurs most notably within the educational system, but also in several aspects of healthcare, not to mention double standards in the justice system. 2.1. Discrimination in the education system

The Romanian education system faces a number of challenges, which disproportionally affect minorities.

Access to education in one’s mother tongue should be a concern based on the principles of equality and non-discrimination. All children, including children attending a school where the language of education is a minority language, should be ensured equal access to high-quality education. Romanian children belonging to a national minority, including the Hungarian-speaking pupils, generally have access to minority language education, depending on their number and the size of their local communities.

After finishing high school, many of the Hungarian-speaking pupils tend to continue their studies at Romanian universities, where the language of study is Romanian. Many of these students face ethnic discrimination in their dealings within the educational system, too.

A former student at a Romanian university turned to our organization with the issue that her Hungarian name had a spelling mistake on her certificate replacing her diploma. The former student emphasized that even after multiple inquiries the institution refused to correct the misspelled name, claiming that they would write the name based on the Romanian alphabet (which is different from the Hungarian one). Our organization also contacted the management of the university regarding this issue. In their answer, the management reiterated that they would write names on certificates based on the Romanian alphabet.

2.1.1. Teaching Romanian to minority pupils

Teaching the official language of Romania to students belonging to the Hungarian minority is a continuing problem.

Taking into account the new national curriculum, from 5th to 9th grade pupils are studying Romanian language and literature from textbooks that are designed especially for minorities, which helps them study it as a second language. Older pupils continue to study the state language from the same textbooks as pupils whose mother tongue is Romanian

When it comes to the textbooks written according to the new curriculum, there are still many problems. First of all, Romanian language and literature textbooks for Hungarian-speaking 9th graders have still not arrived, which might affect the next year’s 10th grader pupils, as well.

Moreover, when it comes to studying Romanian, theoretical knowledge, including difficult literary texts and high-level grammatical analysis still play a vital role. According to the Romanian teachers, instead of the theoretical knowledge, more practical exercises should be included into these new Romanian textbooks. Textbooks should also concentrate on teaching everyday communication.