On Friday, unknown perpetrators vandalized the Monument of the Szekler Martyrs, painting it over with the colors of the Romanian flag. The use of red-yellow-blue paint is becoming more and more common in the case of defacing different Hungarian signs and reviling monuments. According to the head of the city, the perpetrators might be the same as those ones, who incited the population in Târgu Mureș/Marosvásárhely with regard to ethnicity, before the municipal elections.
It is unfortunate that Romanian nationalists are trying to provoke conflict between the two nationalities by damaging road signs and monuments, just when peaceful cooperation between communities would be vital for the development of the city.
The Mikó Imre Minority Rights Legal Services Assistance condemns all extreme manifestations and takes the necessary steps in all similar situations in order to identify the perpetrators and hold them liable as soon as possible. Our association filed a complaint to the Târgu Mureș Public Prosecutor’s Office in this case, in which we asked them to fulfill their duties, identify the committers and bring them to justice.
Our organization is taking the same measures, filing a complaint in the case of the place name sign of Cluj-Napoca/Kolozsvár, which has also been a victim of anti-Hungarian vandalism these days. It is unfortunate, however, when we filed complaints for similar cases of vandalism, the Public Prosecutor’s Office has either not identified the perpetrators or found that, despite of the obvious facts, the incidents had no ethnic background.