Ethnic Hungarian politicians from Transylvania will stand watch on the date the nearby Romanian town originally planned to inaugurate the monument built in an Austro-Hungarian WWI military graveyard in the Úz valley.
Kovászna/Covasna county council president Sándor Tamás and Sepsiszentgyörgy/Sfântu Gheorghe mayor Árpád Antal will spend the night from May 16 to May 17 – the date the Dărmănești council originally planned to inaugurate the Romanian enclosure of the cemetery – there.
As we previously reported, the Dărmănești council recently set up Romanian graves and a monument in a Hungarian military graveyard in the Úz Valley on the territory of the neighboring Szentmárton village, part of Harghita County. The action caused an uproar among Szekler-Hungarians, because crosses were mounted on top of the 10. Royal Hungarian Honvéd infantry regiment’s soldier’s graves.
After both the Ministry of Culture and the county building permits authority warned Dărmănești that the constructions there were illegal and the ministry even threatened to impose a sizeable fine, the council cancelled the planned inauguration.
“We ha also read that they have cancelled the inauguration scheduled for May 17, but in the last one hundred years (since Transylvania has been under Romanian rule) we have learned they cannot be trusted”, Sándor Tamás wrote on the Úz valley Facebook page. “We are at the end of our patience because the act of Dărmănești is not merely an administrative mistake, but a perfidious attempt to trample our souls and desecrate the memory of our heroes.”
The following day, May 17, one of the parties of the ethnic Hungarians, the MPP will continue with a 24-hour watch, party vice-president János Mezei announced.
Title image: Traditionalists in Hussar uniform guard the graves during an ecumenical worship on May 12.
