Hungarian-American Businessman Raises Alarm on Cultural Suppression in Ukraine

Imre Pákh, Hungarian-American businessman and art collector from Mukachevo (Munkács, Transcarpathia), says that fear is the rule in his homeland. The local tyrants of the Ukrainian power are doing everything they can to undermine the Hungarian community: they are taking down Hungarian street signs, pulling down statues, and occupying schools. The businessman stresses that the situation in Kiev is no better.

Instead of naming streets and squares after famous Hungarians who have ties to the city, they are naming them after Ukrainians who have never set foot there, and who are not even known to the public. Meanwhile, the memory of medieval Hungarian heroes is being mocked, Imre Pákh expressed his worries.

The Municipal Council of Mukachevo, under the leadership of Mayor Andriy Baloha, has made a disgraceful decision.

There will not be any more streets named after János Hunyadi and Zsófia Báthory. One by one, these street signs are being taken down.

Reference is being made to two new laws (decommunization and derussification), which state that in future no memorials to communists and Russians will be allowed.

“When were János Hunyadi and Zsófia Báthory Russian communists?!”, Pákh asked. “If this is the way Baloha, who dominates Transcarpathia, reads and interprets the laws, what can we expect from them in the future when the newly enacted laws on the protection of minorities are to be applied?”

He added that he was convinced that Ukraine had no way into the European Union with tycoons and oligarchs like Baloha who practiced oppression instead of law.

When he sued the Andriy Baloha-led municipality for knocking down the statue of the turul bird, he could not find a single lawyer in the whole region who would take the case. Kharkov was the only place, near the Russian border, where Baloha’s name no longer sounded so fearsome, and there he hired a Ukrainian lawyer.

It is less known that before the turul statue was taken down, the statue of the Hungarian painter Mihály Munkácsy had already been removed from the main square of the city.

When it comes to the Hungarian language, arbitrariness does not stop in Transcarpathia. For years now, not a single student has been admitted to the Hungarian language department of Kiev University.

As we have learned, the Hungarian language department exists in theory, but in practice it does not function. It is, so to speak, in a state of quasi-death. In Kiev, they waited until the last class of students had graduated, and since then they have not taken on any new ones, despite the fact that there is interest in the Hungarian language.

The case of the Ferenc Rákóczi II Hungarian Secondary School in Mukachevo seems to be settled, but who knows for how long. The Hungarian headmaster, István Schink, has been reinstated by the education inspector in Mukachevo after winning three lawsuits, but Baloha has hung two Ukrainian deputies around the headmaster’s neck, who cannot do anything without them.

Schink’s contract expires in the summer. At that time, the rumor in town is that there is a good chance that the Ukrainian headmistress, who has just been sacked and is currently running a kindergarten, will be reappointed.

Via Magyar Nemzet; Featured Image: Twitter