After last week’s outpoor of nationalistic messages in the Romanian media, the already rampant anti-Hungarian hysteria was further heightened last week by MP Marius PAȘCAN. In a climate of worrisome xenophobia, PAȘCAN, a member of the People’s Movement Party (PMP) representing Mureș/Maros County, falsely claimed on his Facebook page that Romanian pupils at a school in Corunca/Koronka were excluded from the closing ceremony of the school year. What is more, PAȘCAN also alleged that the diplomas given to the Romanian pupils were written in Hungarian.
In reaction to PAȘCAN’s accusations on social media, the parents of the pupils released a statement in which they condemn the MP’s attempts to create interethnic tensions. In the statement, the parents clarify that the Romanian children were not excluded from the ceremony, but had a separate one on the previous day. This happened at the request of one of the Romanian teachers, who could not attend the festivities on the scheduled day, so they decided to hold a separate ceremony a day in advance. The statement underlines that the diplomas given to the Romanian children were redacted in Romanian, not in Hungarian, as PAȘCAN falsely claimed.
The accusations by Marius PAȘCAN were clearly meant to further capitalise on the anti-Hungarian discourse that dominated the Romanian media in the previous week. Our organisation firmly condemns such actions, which only serve to create tensions between the Hungarian and the Romanian community. The propagation of falsehoods for political gain should be unacceptable in all its forms.