Starting Monday, people in Romania will have to fill out a special form to leave their home between the hours of 11 p.m. and 5.a.m. A Hungarian-language version should be used at least in municipalities where the percentage of Hungarians exceeds 20 percent.
From the transcript sent by the office of Ombudsman Renate Weber, it turns out that they were alerted to the situation by a citizen after he submitted two requests to Home Affairs referring to the constitution and to administrative laws that would require the document be made available in Hungarian in given areas; both of his requests were rejected.
The ombudsman examined the case and concluded that the request was legitimate and something should have been done in the matter: It should have been made possible that people could fill in the declaration for leaving their home during the ongoing coronavirus emergency situation in Hungarian or any other minority language, where the percentage of the minority population exceeds 20 percent.
The National Council for Combating Discrimination (CNCD in Romanian) already reprimanded the Ministry of Home Affairs because it had not made this possible. They suggested that the ministry make declarations in two languages in the future in order to avoid such infringements. This obviously did not happen and probably won’t happen in the future, so the National Council for Combating Discrimination will be forced to reprimand or punish them again.
Featured photo: Székely Hírmondó
