Romanian nationalists celebrate with violent anti-Hungarian provocation

Romanian nationalist organizations have gathered at the military cemetery in Uz Valley.

According to the news portal, Mihail Tarnoveanu said that they would do anything to keep the wooden crosses in place. In his anti-European and anti-foreigner speech, he also spoke out against foreign guest workers, stressing that "Romania belongs to Romanians and must remain the homeland of Romanians." He also underlined that Romanian history was being marginalized in Romanian schools, and he criticized the teaching of Jewish history and the Holocaust. The commemoration continued with a candle-lighting ceremony and a communal meal.

In its coverage, Szekelyhon emphasized that at the end of the ceremony, those present raised a Romanian flag on the exact same flagpole upon which Hungary's national flag had been raised on August 26, at a ceremony organized by the Sânmartin (Csikszentmarton) municipality in memory of Hungarian soldiers buried in the cemetery.

The red-white-green Hungarian flag was no longer on the pole at the start of the Romanian commemoration on Sunday, the news portal wrote. 

The international military cemetery in the depopulated settlement of Uz Valley in Harghita County's Sânmartin, has been the scene of a Romanian-Hungarian conflict for four years. On Romanian Heroes' Day 2019, thousands of Romanians forced their way into the cemetery to attend the Orthodox consecration of a Romanian plot and monument, which hundreds of Szeklers have tried to prevent by forming a human chain, unsuccessfully. 

In a summary published on June 12, 2019, the National Office for the Memory of Heroes (ONCE), which comes under Romania's defense ministry, clarified that the Romanian troops whose names are regularly read out at commemorations by Romanian nationalists were not buried in the Uz Valley cemetery. 

Cover photo: Uz Valley cemetery (Photo: MTI/Nandor Veres)