Today, on the 25th of October, on the Day of Szekler Autonomy we Szeklers – together with other communities standing in solidarity with us – convene in order to repeatedly assert our demand for the territorial autonomy of Szeklerland.
The magnitude of this demand, which is based on international law, is larger this year than it was a year ago. The European citizens’ initiative of the Szekler National Council has received over one and a quarter of a million supporting signatures across Europe. The population of our kin-state, Hungary, is fully united behind the initiative, together with other Hungarian minority communities. The signature collection process, which is still open, attracts more- and more supporters from Spain, mainly Catalans, and Basques, and the numbers of supporting signatures are also going up in Sweden, thanks to the Sami communities, and the local Hungarian diaspora.
The above means that the case of national regions, and with it the case of the Szekler peoples has become a European issue irrevocably!
We reiterate that the European Union needs to review the rigid and obsolete interpretation of the right to self-determination. This right, be it about internal self-determination within a state or about independence, is applicable not just to the population of states, but to other communities who preserved their distinct national, linguistic, cultural or religious characteristics within their respective homelands.
We demand the European Union to start engaging with Szeklers and other similar stateless nations of Europe, as opposed to serving the forces of globalisation!
National regions are not obstacles to development, but the hidden resources of Europe. Assimilation or emigration was never an option for the population of Szeklerland, Catalonia, or the Basque Country. Now that the corona virus-pandemic has opened a view to end the mass migration caused by the backward effects of the globalized world, the time has come to recreate the local conditions to build a new Europe!
It is appalling and unacceptable in the 21st century that both Spain as well as Romania answered with prison and retaliation to the legitimate claim of their respective traditional national communities. The Catalan leaders, as well as the two Szekler youngsters convicted in the so called “Szekler terror trial”, are both victims of show trials. As persons dedicated to democracy, we denounce these methods used in dictatorships! We firmly reject to relapse into a Europe where state terror can once again persecute innocent citizens as part of politically motivated show trials.
We demand territorial autonomy for Szeklerland, as per the statute of autonomy adopted by the Szekler National Council:
„Autonomy of the regional population denotes the collective right and ability of the autochton local majority to have elected bodies, administratively placed between central government and local authorities, exercising self-governing competencies, and assuming jurisdiction over specific competencies normally associated with the central state, in order to manage, on their own responsibility and in the interest of its population, a substantial share of public affairs, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity.”
Autonomy for Szeklerland, freedom to the Szekler peoples!
In the name of the participants of the Day of Szekler Autonomy across the municipalities of Szeklerland:
Szeklerland, Izsák Balázs
25 October 2020. President of the Szekler National Council
Szekler National Council