Verbal Attacks on Hungarians an Everyday Occurrence

The ongoing "crusade" in the Uz Valley, situated in the easternmost part of Szeklerland, is continuing.The shadow of international conflict is palpable, tensions are running high, and the world war heroes resting in the military cemetery seem to stir in their graves.

Csíkszentmárton, 2023. augusztus 26. Vitéz Bartha Mihály úzvölgyi veterán az erdélyi Csíkszentmártonhoz tartozó Úzvölgye temetőjében az 1944. augusztus 26-i szovjet betörés során elesett honvédek emlékére szervezett ökumenikus tábori misén 2023. augusztus 26-án. MTI/Veres Nándor Fotó: MTI/Veres Nándor

On Mogyoros Hill, during the Romanian invasion in 1916, many soldiers lost their lives. A 1924 register notes a total of 1,350 soldiers, including Hungarian, Austrian, German, Italian, Serbian, Russian, and Romanian, buried in separate plots in the area, with at least a thousand being Hungarians.

During the Second World War, on August 26, 1944, the Soviet army invaded the region. The small number of Hungarian border guards stationed here couldn't mount any real resistance, leading to their retreat alongside the local residents. The international military cemetery in the depopulated settlement of Uz Valley in Harghita County's Sanmartin (Csikszentmarton) has been the backdrop for a Romanian-Hungarian conflict for four years.

On Romanian Heroes' Day, June 6, 2019, thousands of Romanians forcefully entered the cemetery to attend the Orthodox consecration of a Romanian plot and monument. Despite the efforts of hundreds of Szeklers forming a human chain to prevent this, their attempts were unsuccessful. Fortunately, it was thanks to the self-discipline of the Hungarians that the events did not escalate into more serious atrocities."

Uz Valley ownership dispute

Since then, the dispute over the ownership of the cemetery led to a series of desecration acts.  Although no Romanian troops took part in the fighting in 1944 in the Uz Valley, the cemetery is referred to as an international military cemetery in official Romanian parlance. This is the reason why the municipality of Darmanesti in Bacau county attempts to attach a Romanian identity to the cemetery. A territorial dispute has been going on for years between the village and Sanmartin (Csikszentmarton), although under a law from 1968 that has remained in force to date, the area is under Sanmartin's administration. 

Several years ago, the directors of the cadastral registry offices of Bacau (Bako) and Harghita (Hargita) counties agreed that the Uz River would form a more natural border, and they printed a stamp to that effect on their maps. However, according to the law of almost fifty years ago, Sanmartin (Csikszentmarton) still has the right to the area, as the cemetery is part of the settlement's public property, which was confirmed by a 2010 government decision. Although the cemetery has always been under the maintenance of the Sanmartin municipality, in April 2019, Darmanesti (Dormanfalva) arbitrarily created a Romanian section in it. There are about six hundred wooden crosses at the fenced in memorial site with a carved Szekler gate, and crosses of concrete commemorating Romanian soldiers have been placed next to them - partly on the cemetery's walkway and partly on the as yet unmarked Hungarian soldiers' graves.

After countless legal and administrative twists and turns in the story, the concrete crosses were removed on June 29, 2023, and they were soon replaced by one hundred and fifty wooden crosses by the supporters of the Calea Neamului organization. "Satanists, leave the crosses alone! […] If anyone dares lay their hands on the hundred and fifty wooden crosses, we will return them all, I guarantee that! Today they tear it down, we make new ones and put everything back in its rightful place. We are demonstrating in the towns of Miercurea Ciuc (Csikszereda), Sanmartin, so that the Hungarians get used to the Romanian flag, which was stolen from the cemetery," scathed Mihai Tirnoveanu, head of Calea Neamului, in a video message.

Over the past years, the dentist and activist from Brasov (Brasso) has become the most ferocious anti-Hungarian agitator in Romania. Tirnoveanu, who is at the forefront of the racket, is currently facing criminal charges for vandalism and grave desecration, but he claims that the Hungarian government is exerting political pressure on the Romanian authorities in order to hold him personally and the organization he leads accountable. Meanwhile, not a single Romanian party has distanced itself from the extreme anti-Hungarianism of the recent events in the Uz river valley. Following consultations of the parliamentary state secretary of Hungary's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Levente Magyar, with the Romanian ambassador in Budapest, the ministry said that the latter had promised to take action against the scandalous events. Tirnoveanu called the position of the Romanian ambassador to Budapest outrageous and hoped that the news reports were based on a mistranslation. The nationalist "patriotism" of the activist does not only manifest itself in anti-Hungarianism, he has also objected, for example, to the diminished education of Romanian history and the teaching of the Holocaust in Romanian schools.

Anti-Hungarianism and no accountability

The activist regularly holds provocating tours in the settlements of Szeklerland, but his actions are rarely successful. The association proclaiming ideological kinship with the far-right parliamentary party, Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR ) held last year's Romanian national holiday celebrations in Targu Secuiesc (Kezdivasarhely), but the performance of the delegation that arrived with much pomp and circumstance faded into empty nationalism. Tirnoveanu and his colleagues also planned to disrupt and prevent Prime Minister Viktor Orban's speech at the annual Tusvany festival in Baile Tusnad this year. The attempt, however, was thwarted by law enforcement officers.

Kelemen Hunor, party president of the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ-UDMR), urged decisive action on the part of the authorities and state institutions. In his view, what can be concluded from the lack of official accountability is that state institutions are weak or complicit in the case. He called it unacceptable that while the Hungarian community is regularly verbally expelled from the country and sent back to Asia, the dominant players in Romanian politics do not condemn what happened. Romania's institutions must act decisively against the anti-Hungarian nationalists in the Uz Valley.

In the meantime, the people of Sanmartin (Csikszentmarton) will remove the Romanian tricolor raised in the cemetery, since after a commemoration in August, the Hungarian flag had also been taken down as cemetery regulations adopted by the local government state flags can only be flown within the burial place during commemorations and celebrations. Tirnoveanu and company are sure to put it back with the assistance of law enforcement officers who always turn out in large numbers for similar events. All this can take place in 2023, in the so-called friendly relations of two EU countries.

Cover photo: Veteran Mihaly Bartha in Uz Valley cemetery of Sanmartin (Csikszentmarton), Transylvania, at the ecumenical camp mass on August 26, 2023 in memory of the soldiers killed in the August 26, 1944 Soviet invasion. (Photo: Nandor Veres/MTI)