Hungary Demands U.N. Probe of Alleged Abuses in Romania

GENEVA —  Hungary, in an unprecedented attack by one East Bloc state on another, demanded Monday that the U.N. Commission on Human Rights investigate violations of basic freedoms in neighboring Romania.

Gyula Horn, Hungarian state secretary for foreign affairs, a rank equivalent to deputy foreign minister, delivered the demand at the commission’s annual meeting here.

Horn specifically denounced the repression of the Hungarian ethnic minority in Romania and a wholesale destruction of villages to facilitate a forced industrialization program ordered by Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu.

Budapest backs a Swedish proposal that the U.N. human rights body appoint someone to investigate Romania, he said.

“We lend support to the initiative of Sweden for appointing a special rapporteur to examine violations of human rights in Romania,” Horn said in a speech to the 43-nation commission.

U.N. officials said it was the first time an East Bloc state had denounced another in front of the Human Rights Commission, let alone demanded a formal inquiry.

The commission has several special rapporteurs-- persons authorized to prepare reports--and working groups reporting on other countries and regions including Afghanistan, Cuba, Iran, southern Africa, Israel and the occupied territories.

Ceausescu announced plans early in 1988 to demolish about half of Romania’s 15,000 villages by the year 2000 and resettle the rural population into 500 agro-industrial complexes. Demolition is already under way, especially around Bucharest.

Hungary charges that the mass industrialization and resettlement drive also amounts to the last stage in assimilating the 2 million ethnic Hungarians in the Transylvania region of Romania.

Horn said Hungary “is open to any criticism” of its own policy and practices regarding human rights. “We do not regard it as interference in our internal affairs,” he said, in a departure from the customary position of Communist nations that any U.N. inquiry into their policies would be an intrusion.