Retired general Mircea Chelaru filed a complaint against the president of the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ), accusing him of spreading war propaganda through comments made by the former following the incident in Valea Uzului/Úz-völgye on June 6th. The obvious goal of this was to publicly undermine Transylvanian Hungarians in the eyes of the international community, as well as the Romanian majority of the country, and also to distract attention from the actual problems, namely the 50 crosses illegally erected on the graves of the Hungarian soldiers, using public funds, despite the fact that Romanian authorities later confirmed that there are actually only 11 Romanian soldiers buried in the cemetery.
The Romanian Ministry of Culture approves legionary symbols
The situation regarding the illegal occupation of the war cemetery in Valea Uzului/Úz-völgye has arrived to a new chapter: the local government of Dărmănești/Dormánfalva started to retroactively acquire the permits necessary for the concrete crosses that they had already put up back in April. It is clear from this that in the moment of making these modifications in the cemetery the local government in question did not have the documents and permits required by law, but despite this, no charges have been brought against the local council or its leader.
Heightened anti-Hungarian atmosphere during the qualifying matches for the 2020 European Football Championship
During the qualifying round for the 2020 European Football Championship the Romanian national team first played in Norway, Oslo on the 7th of June, followed by a match on the 10th on the Ta’Qali National Stadium in Malta. During both games Romanian fans were continuously shouting anti-Hungarian slogans, even on the TV coverage one could hear for several minutes the sadly familiar chant: “Out with the Hungarians from the country!”
Romanians vandalised the military cemetery in the Úz Valley
Close to a thousand civilians and public personalities from the Szeklerland had come together to form a human chain around the military cemetery in the Úz Valley yesterday afternoon in order to inhibit Romanians from unlawfully breaking into the common graveyard, where the bodies of Austrian, German and Hungarian soldiers rest. After Romanian groups had arrived by force in numbers to the scene, they started demanding the opening of the cemetery gate while shouting: “out with the Hungarians from the country!”, singing irredentist songs and yelling to the Hungarian groups present to be ashamed of themselves.
Setback in legislation regarding linguistic rights in Romania
Recent years, but especially the last two years have been marked by so far failed attempts to update linguistic rights for national minorities in Romania. One such initiative was blocked in Parliament in 2017, while another one, an attempt to adopt an Administrative Code, was initially adopted by Parliament in the summer of 2018, then contested by opposition parties, as well as the President, and it was eventually declared unconstitutional in its entirety by the Constitutional Court, based on procedural grounds.