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A court in Oradea (Nagyvárad, Romania) has annulled a fine of RON 10,000 (EUR 2,000) imposed by the Directorate of Culture of Satu Mare County on the Mayor’s Office in Carei (Nagykároly, Romania) following the inauguration of poet Ferenc Kölcsey’s statue last year, writes Krónika Online.
The sentence, published on the court’s website, annulled protocol No. 7204 issued by the Directorate of Culture on April 11, 2023 (the day before the statue’s unveiling, on the day of Hungarian poetry). In it, the institution had fined the municipality of Carei for erecting a statue in honor of the author of the Hungarian national anthem, allegedly illegally. An appeal against the judgment can be lodged within 30 days. Jenő Kovács, the mayor of the city, said that he was delighted to learn of the court’s ruling.
He stressed that the verse from the hymn on the statue would soon be translated into Romanian to prove “that we are not against anyone, we have no problems with anyone.”
“In this sense, the concerns of the Directorate of Culture of Satu Mare County are unfounded,” the Mayor wrote in a post on his social networking site on Monday. The statue of Ferenc Kölcsey in Carei bears the third line of the National Anthem, “extend over it your guarding arm,” along with the musical score by Ferenc Erkel. The Directorate of Culture also questioned why the text was not also in Romanian.
At the same time, Kovács recalled that Kölcsey’s full-length statue was unveiled on April 12 last year amid nationalist agitation, and at the unveiling ceremony, about a hundred Romanian demonstrators greeted the then Head of State, Katalin Novák, with hostility in Carei. The protesters, wearing Romanian tricolors, booed Hungarian dignitaries; the demonstrators, who were brought to the site by the extreme nationalist organization Calea Neamului (The Road of the Nation), held up banners reading
Here is Romania, here is our homeland” and “One thing is eternal: Transylvania is Romanian land.”
“We must not forget where the blind nationalism imported from different parts of the country is leading us. We have witnessed a truly absurd, grotesque performance. Carei must continue to preserve its multicultural and multi-ethnic character. This is the city where Romanians, Hungarians, Swabians, Romani, and other nationalities live together in peace,” said the Mayor. Kovács will not be running for a second term in this year’s local elections, but his daughter will be running as the RMDSZ (Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania) candidate for mayor.
Via kronikaonline.ro; Featured Image: Facebook / Nagykárolyi Református Egyházmegye