Robert Kaliňák, Slovakia’s Deputy Prime Minister and arguably the closest confidant of Prime Minister Robert Fico, made brief, concise, and above all shocking remarks on Wednesday evening during the news program Rádiožurnál on Slovak public radio regarding the issue of expropriations in the recent past, as reported by the Hungarian-language news portal ma7.sk.
He described the claim that these were Beneš expropriations as a lie, since the Slovak Land Fund is only laying claim to assets that have belonged to it since 1945. He then added that these territories, which belong to the Land Fund, are being used unlawfully by someone else.
The Slovak statement in English: Please explain to me how the Beneš Decrees can expropriate anything from anyone. They cannot at all.
The Land Fund merely claims the assets to which it has been entitled since 1945, but which are being used by someone else in violation of the law.
Robert Kaliňák’s statement is also significant because, until now, no one on the government’s side has so bluntly addressed the Slovak Land Fund’s long-standing activities, which aim to enforce—eight decades after their adoption—the resolutions of the Slovak National Council that were enacted in the spirit of the Beneš Decrees, which collectively brand Hungarians and Germans as guilty. And Deputy Prime Minister Kaliňák cynically adds that this real estate has since been unlawfully used by others.
Robert Kaliňák. Photo: U.S. Secretary of Defense/Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons
The situation, then, is that the collective guilt of the German and Hungarian minorities still serves as a legal basis today for enforcing such punitive and expropriation decisions, even though these decisions are supposedly no longer valid as a source of law.
There is no need to be polite here and cautiously speak of “corrections,” as is occasionally heard from some Slovak politicians. According to Robert Kaliňák, the reality is that
those Hungarians or their descendants who have not been expropriated since 1945 must expect that their properties will be nationalized without compensation and perhaps without their knowledge.
On this basis, what will become of those who were on the expulsion lists under the laws of the time but were able to remain in their homeland by a stroke of luck or thanks to someone’s intercession? Will they, if they are still alive, now be expelled? Or will the government retroactively bill them for the years spent in their homeland?
And what will become of those who, in order to secure their jobs and livelihoods, had to deny their Hungarian ethnicity and were forced to “re-Slovakize” themselves, also in accordance with the laws of that time? Will these individuals, if they are still alive, now be held accountable for having been unlawfully allowed to retain their fundamental human rights?
Hungarian Alliance, the advocacy group representing Hungarians in Slovakia, has evidence that the expropriation of land based on ethnicity has been taking place continuously and systematically since 1991. It calls on the European Commission to finally take action, as even an investment funded by EU funds is affected, since it is being carried out on expropriated land. “I am convinced that the Constitutional Court will sooner or later declare the ‘Lex Beneš’ provision of the Criminal Code unconstitutional, but nothing prevents the members of the coalition from preempting this decision and repealing the ‘Lex Beneš’ immediately in Parliament,” stated László Gubík, chairman of the Hungarian Alliance.
Via ma7.sk; Featured image: Hungary Today
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