As an appendage of the Helsinki Accords, the Copenhagen Document,
agreed to by its signatories in June 1990, focuses on human rights
issues. A section of Part IV states that

        The participating States will protect the ethnic, cultural,
        liguistic and religious identity of national minorities on their
        territory and create conditions for the promotion of that identity.
        They will take necessary measures to that effect after due
        consultations, including contacts with organizations or
        associations of such minorities, in accordance with the decision
        making procedures of each State.

further

        The participating States note the efforts undertaken to protect
        and create conditions for the promotion of the ethnic, cultural
        linguistic and religious identity of certain national minorities by
        establishing, as one possible means to achieve these aims,
        appropriate local or autonomous administrations corresponding
        to the specific historical or territorial circumstances of such
        minorities and in accordance with the policies of the State
        concerned.

While Rumania was a signatory to these declarations, in practice it
pursues different objectives.  I forward, verbatim but without some of the
tables, an HHRF ALERT from the Hungarian Human Rights Foundation.

C.K. Zoltani

___________________________________________________________________________

HHRF ALERT

        Rumanian Government Prefects Systematically
        Violate Priciples of Local Democracy

        Authorities Forcibly Remove Bi-Lingual Signs


In a sweeping effort to curtail the rights of democratically elected
local councils, government-appointed Prefects in seven
Hungarian-inhabited counties in Transylvania have stepped up the pace of
filing lawsuits against localities which decided to post signs in
Rumanian-Hungarian, or Rumanian-Hungarian-German languages.

In the 40 percent Hungarian-inhabited Mures County, the Prefect did not
even wait for a court decision before instructing police and road
maintenance crews, on June 21, to dismantle bi-lingual signs in 17
villages. Since the signs had actually been placed on private property,
an additional legal infraction also occurred.

As part of an apparently well-coordinated plan commencing in mid-1993
and peaking in March of this year, Prefects have focused on
predominantly Hungarian inhabited communities, from remote villages to
large cities, in at least 31 0f the 49 localities known to have adopted
resolutions authorizing the bi-lingual signs. Lawsuits have also been
filed in the two Hungarian-majority inhabited counties of Harghita and
Covasna, where in July 1992 the government had replaced the country's
only ethnic Hungarian Prefects with Rumanians.

The Rumanian Law on Local Administration (No. 69/1991) clearly
establishes decentralization and local autonomy as the fundamental
principles of local administration, and invests popularly elected local
councils with the power to legislate matters of local concern. But the
centrally appointed Prefects are mandated by law to "watch over the
lawfulness of local council activity," and have the right to suspend
local council decisions even though not themselves answerable to the
electoate. The role of the Prefect is therefore contested by locally
elected administrative bodies throughout Rumania. Critics maintain that
the Prefects have abused their power by taking advantage of their
authority to undermine the clearly, legally and democratically
formulated wishes of popularly elected local administrative bodies.

The Prefects'action appear to violate not just the principles of local
democracy, but minority rights as well. The Rumanian Constitution
explicitly grants persons belonging to national minorities the right "to
preserve, develop and express their ethnic, cultural, linguistic and
religious identity" (Article 6). In a bizarre interpretation of the law,
however, Prefects have argued - and the courts have concurred in 13 of
16 cases to date - that these local decisions violate:

(1) Article 1 of the Constitution which proclaims a "national state,
sovereign and independent, unitary and indivisible;"

(2) Article 13 which prescribes Rumanian as the official language of the
country. In court papers the Prefects argue that native language use can
occur only in those cases where the law expressly authorizes it, rather
than in those instances where it fails to prohibit it, as is generally
accepted in international practice;

(3) Provisions of the Law on Local Administration (namely Articles 30
(3) and 54 (2,3,4), which specify those cases where language other than
Rumanian can be used in contacts with public authorities. These
provisions, however, do not restrict bi-lingual usage to the named
instances alone, and more importantly, do not at all address the issue
of posting bi-lingual signs.

The Rumanian Constitution (Article 20) also gives precedence to
international legal standards over domestic law cases where
inconsistencies occur. But the above-mentioned thirteen court rulings in
favor of Prefects conspicuously ignore Article 7, Paragraph 4 of the
Council of Europe's Recommendation 1201 (Protocol on the Rights of
National Minorities to the European Convention on Human Rights), which
Rumania recently ratified and which expressly provides: "In the regions
in which substantial numbers of a national minority are settled, the
persons belonging to that minority shall have the right to display in
their language local names, signs, inscriptions and other similar
information visible to the public."

Following an on-site visit to Rumania in March 1994, Council of Europe
Rapporteurs Gunnar Jansson and Friedrich Konig labeled removal of the
bi-lingual signs as "childish" and contrary to the above-cited article.

Re: Paul Gelencser's query about the spelling and status of the "Slovak
dam" on the Danube--
The Slovak name for the place is, I believe, Gabcikovo, and my understanding is
that the Slovak Government has been going ahead with construction despite the
protests of environmental groups and the pull-out of the Hungarian government.
As I understand it, the main problem for Hungary is not enough water for farm-
ing, but adequate water levels for potable drinking water for Budapest, which
get most if not all it's water from the Danube just up-river of the city.  The
deversion of the Danube caused by the dam threatens this supply.

Regards,
Be1la Ba1tkay

W. BATKAY writes:
>
> Re: Paul Gelencser's query about the spelling and status of the "Slovak
> dam" on the Danube--
The Slovak name for the place is, I believe, Gabcikovo, and my understanding is
>that the Slovak Government has been going ahead with construction despite the
>protests of environmental groups and the pull-out of the Hungarian government.

     The construction is finished and the dam/canal/electric plant has
been working for almost two years. Two years in October.  The effect
on the environment has been positive according to reports of the
technical and enivornmental panel set up to report to the
International court of Justice.
 The World Wildlife Fund two months ago admitted it was wrong and has
announced it will not support any campaigns against the dam.
I don't know of other environmentalist groups.


>As I understand it, the main problem for Hungary is not enough water for farm-
>ing, but adequate water levels for potable drinking water for Budapest, which
>get most if not all it's water from the Danube just up-river of the city.  The
>diversion of the Danube caused by the dam threatens this supply.
>
  The amount of water flowing past Budapest remains exactly the same.
Look at a map of the river. The diversion reroutes part of the water
through the new canal instead of the old bed, and puts it back into
the channel below Gabcikovo.   The volume is necessarily the same. In
fact, it would HAVE to be or there would not have been any sense to
the plan to build a dam at Nagymaros.
  The lowered water levels along the old Danube bed were being caused
much more by the effect of dams in Austria over the past 20 years on
silt deposition than by the new diversion.  In fact, this condition
could be mostly cured by completing the reservoir at Dunakilti and the
dam at Nagymaros, which would slow down the erosion and back up the
water to create a larger reservoir below Gabcikovo.  Dams have a habit
of backing water up and raising underground water tables.

    Jan George Frajkor                      _!_
 School of Journalism, Carleton Univ.      --!--
 1125 Colonel By Drive                       |
 Ottawa, Ontario                            /^\
 Canada K1S 5B6                         /^\     /^\
       /   
  o: 613 788-7404   fax: 613 788-6690  h: 613 563-4534

From Nature, 1 September 1994
() represent my editing

                                ***
..(budget decisions) together with the new government's declared interest
in building a more robust structure for science policy, indicate that this
government may be more sympathetic towards science than its predecessor.

Negotiations with the Hungarian Academy of Sciences persuaded the socialist
prime minister, Jyula (sic) Horn, that the academy, which runs more than 40
research institutes in Hungary and also acts as a learned society, should be
considered a special case because of the severity of its treatment over
recent years.

..(The academy's) budget has more than halved in real terms since 1992.  The
academy has also had to deal with perpetual political hostility--including
charges of harbouring communist sympathies--despite the extensive reforms
it has undergone.  After years of fighting for legal status, the academy
finally achieved it last spring.  "We have cut 35% of our staff [since 1989]
--the highest percentage cut of any state-owned sector," says (general
secretary of the academy La1szlo1) Keviczky.

The government has been responsive to these arguments, and is now asking the
academy to sacrifice only HUF120 million from its 1994 budget of HUF5 billion.
..The academy comes under the aegis of the ministry of culture and education,
whose new minister, the 31-year-old free democrat Ga1bor Fodor is an unknown
quantity as far as his position on science goes.

Applied science did not fare so well last week, suffering severe cuts comparabl
e
with other, non-science sectors.  The National Committee for Technological
Development [known as the OMFB], which is responsible for allocating grants for
applied research, will lose HUF600 million from its 1994 HUF4.6 billion budget.
Lajos Myiri, deputy director of OMFB, says that savings will probably be made
in its infrastructure funds rather than in its competitive research awards,
which it is determined to defend at all costs....

(photo of tousle-haired GF, with caption
         Young, gifted and left-of-centre: Ga1bor Fodor, Hungary's 4th most
         popular politician, is now in charge of basic science.
                                ***

--Greg