It may appear repetitive, but we cannot allow for any such incident to be left unreported: Saturday night, unknown perpetrators used red, yellow and blue spray paint to deface the Hungarian – and partly the German – name of the town on the trilingual road sign for Nagybánya/Baia Mare/Neustadt in Máramaros/Maramureș County.
The spokesperson of the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania, also known by its Hungarian acronym of RMDSZ, Csilla Hegedűs, told maszol.ro that RMDSZ considers the defacing to be yet another provocation against the Transylvanian Hungarian community and hopes that the authorities will fulfill their legal duties.
“It seems that some people, even after 100 years, still cannot accept the right of the Hungarian community to use their native language. It is stated everywhere that Romania is a role model in the handling of rights of national minorities, but this seems only to be true in writing.”
-said Hegedűs.
Unfortunately, this is not the first incident, as similar provocations have happened in the past few months in Kolozs/Cluj, Bihar/Bihor, Maros/Mureș and Hargita/Harghita Counties as well. Up until now, only one of the perpetrators has been identified and caught by police – a 30-year-old man from Bacău (Bákó in Hungarian) who drove to Szeklerland in early January to deface multiple road signs in Maros and Hargita Counties. He was identified with the help of some CCTV footage but ended up only being fined for vandalism, not public provocation.
Title image: Defaced trilingual road sign in Nagybánya/Baia Mare/Neustadt on the morning of March 1, 2020. (Photo: RMDSZ)
