The rain couldn’t stop several hundred participants attending a peaceful demonstration against what has happened to the graveyard in the Úz Valley, organized by the Hungarian People’s Party of Transylvania (Erdélyi Magyar Néppárt or EMNP) in downtown Csíkszereda/Miercurea Ciuc.
Armed with banners containing the message of the demonstration, “We won’t let you take the Úz Valley graveyard,” “NO to violence,” etc., and Szekler flags, the participants arriving from multiple cities gathered in Clap Square (Taps tér in Hungarian) in the center of the city, demanding the resignation of the Harghita County prefect, because “he worked against the county and the majority of the population living here. We have a prefect, who, three years and fifteen years ago, removed our community’s symbol, the Szekler flag, from this square. We think this man should go,” said the Manifesto of the demonstration read by vice president of the EMNP Ervin Tőke. The participants also demanded the restoration of the military cemetery to its original state and the government to stop the nationalization of the graveyard.
As we previously reported on June 6, 2019, an angry Romanian crown broke into a WWI-era Austro-Hungarian graveyard in the Úz Valley, surging past a picket of praying ethnic Hungarians, despite police presence, and started laying wreaths at the illegal Romanian Orthodox cross and 52 erected concrete crosses of purported Romanian war heroes.
Title image: Vajk István Szigeti
