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Dear Sir,

We would like to bring to your kind attention the plight of the Szekler people living under Romanian oppression.

Szeklerland, a country slightly larger than Lebanon with a population more than twice that of Iceland, is situated in the south-eastern part of Transylvania. The Szeklers are a people related to the Hungarians who still retain their own specific script. The country is mentioned already in the Middle Ages as "Regnum Siculorum", having its own separate National Assembly, customs and laws, under the over lordship of the Hungarian kings, who recognised their autonomy in change of their military services.

In 1918, at the end of WWI, the Szeklers tried to establish their own state, the Republic of Szeklerland, but were hindered by both the politicians of the collapsing Hungary and the invading Romanians helped by the French.

Today Szeklerland is still under Romanian occupation, accomplished against the will of its inhabitants. Its people is subject to human right abuses, discrimination, persecuted and deprived of land and national resources.
The founding and activity of genuine Szekler organisations is hindered by both the intolerant Romanian government and by the leaders of the Hungarians of Romania, whose organisation, the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania is part of the governing coalition. Presently the Szeklers are denied not only the exercise of self-determination but even the official use of their own script and their own ethnic name.

In the same time it seems that Romania's accession in 2007 will be accepted by the EU in spite of its incomplete and retarded process of democratisation and regardless of the Szeklers' plight. Thus Romania will bring into Europe the unsolved case of the last of the small European nations lacking any collective rights. This is likely to transform Szeklerland - where the tension is already increasing, in a trouble-generating spot with serious implications for the European security.

In order to promote the Szeklers cause, on 25 June 2005 it was constituted in Belfast the group of the Friends of Szeklerland. If you would like to obtain more information about Szeklerland please do not hesitate to contact us.

We hope that this information will be useful whenever you will have to take decisions related to Romania and/or Szeklerland.

In the name of Friends of Szeklerland, yours respectfully,

Levente B***.