Far-right Orthodox nationalist groups and their leaders have a special gift, a “natural-born talent,” for promoting false data to their followers, which recently came into the spotlight due to the interethnic conflict caused by these people at the Úz Valley military graveyard on June 6. They deliberately ignore the information published in official documents and forcefully push their own myths and agenda, which causes unwanted tensions between Hungarians and Romanians. The latest such effort is a torch-lit march scheduled for October 25 at the Úz Valley cemetery in memory of the 149 Romanian soldiers who fell in the Úz Valley battle during World War I.
The upcoming event was announced by the leader of the Orthodox nationalist group Calea Neamului, Mihai Sorin Tîrnoveanu announced on his Facebook page, accompanied by a series of pictures about the commemoration of Romanian heroes on September 8, the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Interestingly, Tîrnoveanu has different memories from June 6 compared to what the videos show when the drunk Romanian crowd arrived in front of the graveyard. He recalls 5,000 amazing Romanians commemorating their fallen heroes, who later became the target of anti-nationalist propaganda, just like in March 1990 when buses of (also drunk) Romanian peasants from Hodák/Hodac and Libánfalva (Ibănești) arrived in Marosvásárhely/Târgu Mureș to “help their counterparts.” He must have forgotten that Romanian police blocked the entrances to the city but somehow allowed buses of ethnic Romanians through the roadblocks. The violence erupted shortly afterwards. From Tîrnoveanu’s perspective these peasants were heroes, and the international media is to blame, because it universally labeled them as “barbarians”.
We must not forget that Tîrnoveanu was the person who promoted the nationalist propaganda of 149 Romanian heroes buried in the Úz Valley graveyard without any document backing his claim. The truth, on the other hand is that the remains of the 149 Romanian heroes have been moved to the international military graveyard in Comănești. His push for a commemoration event organized in the Úz Valley cemetery on the Day of the Romanian Armed Forces is just another attempt to continue the propaganda of false history, which materialized with the illegally erected and forcefully inaugurated 52 concrete crosses and the Orthodox cross.
