Slovak president has a duty to represent Hungarians in Slovakia, Péter Magyar says

"If you'll allow me (but even if you won't), I will refer to geographical regions by the names I learned from my parents and which we have been using for a thousand years. Just as every Hungarian still calls your capital – the place where 11 Hungarian kings were crowned – Pozsony," Péter Magyar wrote in his Tuesday post addressed to Slovak President Peter Pellegrini.

The leader of the Tisza Party was responding to Pellegrini's comments made in a video on Monday, in which he called it an insult that the "potential next Hungarian prime minister" had referred to Slovakia as "Felvidék" in his letter on the Beneš decrees sent last week. Incidentally, Magyar did not actually use the word Felvidék to talk about Slovakia in his letter, but only wrote about the "Hungarians from Felvidék".

"I would have appreciated it if you had reflected on the actual problems raised in my open letter to the Slovak prime minister," Magyar wrote, adding that there is no place for legislation based on collective guilt in the 21st century, and added that neither Hungary nor Europe would accept Slovakia confiscating land from Hungarians in Slovakia based on the Beneš Decrees.

"Nor is it acceptable that you have signed a law that threatens those who dare to criticize the Beneš Decrees with six months in prison. You have the right and the duty to represent all people living in Slovakia, including members of the Hungarian minority.

And my duty is to stand up for all Hungarians, regardless of where they live in the world," Magyar wrote.

Although Prime Minister Viktor Orbán already held talks with the Slovak government about the new legislation in mid-December, the Hungarian government has remained silent on the subject since then. Even RMDSZ, (the party representing the Hungarian minority in Romania) has spoken out against the new legislation. A demonstration was held in front of the Slovak embassy in Budapest in early January, which was also attended by Péter Magyar. A petition signed by public figures and activists is calling on the Slovak government to repeal the amendment.

As we reported earlier, the new law imposes a six-month prison sentence on anyone who questions the Beneš Decrees. The decrees were adopted in the aftermath of World War II, and under them the Czechoslovak state applied the principle of collective guilt to the Hungarian and German inhabitants of its territory, in many cases depriving them of their property, possessions and homes.