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The Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), which is trying to boost its popularity by inciting anti-Hungarian hatred, is planning a nationalist rally in Úzvölgye on June 13. Gábor Hajdú, Harghita County representative of the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ), brought this to the attention of the OSCE human rights delegation visiting Bucharest on Tuesday.
“AUR is going to the Úzvölgye again! They have proven more than once that they are not going there for peace, but to dance on the graves of our grandfathers, tear down fences, and destroy the military cemetery,” the politician, who also represents the RMDSZ in the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, was quoted as saying in a statement issued by the association on Tuesday.
According to Gábor Hajdú, the sense of danger among Hungarians in Transylvania may have subsided in recent times, but the danger has not disappeared. “We can see in the current election campaign that the AUR is attacking Hungarians with anti-Hungarian manifestations. They want to gain strength from this. In Satu Mare (Szatmár) they are using the Hungarian community as a target, having joined forces with the National Liberal Party (PNL) against Hungarians. In Cluj they want to close Hungarian schools.
We have hundreds of lawsuits against the use of our mother tongue, our flags and coats of arms, and now they are going to Úzvölgye again on June 13 to desecrate the memory and graves of our ancestors,”
the politician said, listing the AUR’s anti-Hungarian attacks.
Although there was no evidence that the remains of the Romanian soldiers would be in the cemetery, the local government of the nearest town, Dormánfalva (Dormănești) decided to erect crosses in memory of the Romanian soldiers allegedly resting there. Not much later, thousands of Romanians forced their way into the cemetery to attend the Romanian Orthodox consecration of the Romanian plot and monument, while Szeklers tried to prevent it.
The Romanian authorities later acknowledged that there had been no legal basis to erect the crosses.
Last year, 150 wooden crosses were erected under the same circumstances by supporters of the Romanian organization Calea Neamului, after the Romanian judiciary ruled their first occupation of the site illegal and ordered the removal of the symbols and structures. The smaller crosses, covered with a Romanian national ribbon, were accompanied by a larger one and a flagpole with the Romanian flag on it.
Following denunciations by the president of the Harghita County Council, the municipality of Sânmartin (Csíkszentmárton), and the Transylvanian Hungarian Association (EMSZ), several proceedings were launched against Mihai Tirnoveanu, the organization’s leader. As Hungary Today reported recently, the prosecutor’s office in Cluj-Napoca (Kolozsvár) has closed the criminal proceedings.
The RMDSZ politician drew the attention of the representatives of the OSCE to the fact that the AUR is not a threat that came out of thin air, and that “this anti-Hungarian party” will gain strength and will enter the municipalities and the European Parliament. In a statement to the Hungarian press, he also said that
the RMDSZ had asked the OSCE Human Rights Office to send observers to the EP and parliamentary elections in Romania.
At the meeting, Hajdú drew the attention of the international organization to the fact that the European representation of Hungarians in Romania is also threatened by the five percent electoral threshold, which is unfairly high for the minority Hungarians, who make up barely six percent of the country’s population.
He explained that if Hungarians’ willingness to vote does not reach the expected high turnout rate in Romania, the more than one million Hungarians will not be represented in Brussels at all. “The role of the RMDSZ is to make people aware of what is at stake. The Hungarians of Transylvania, the Szekler community, must have the vital instinct to go to the polls, recognizing their own interests and those of future generations, because this is a community issue,” he pointed out.
Via MTI, Featured image: Facebook/Cătălin Gheorghe