Ethnic clashes of Târgu Mures
Encyclopedia
Târgu Mureş is a town in Romania
with an ethnically mixed population that was almost equally distributed between Romanians and Hungarians after the fall of the communist regime
in December 1989. In March 1990, short-lived, but violent clashes occurred there between the two ethnic groups in the town, involving ethnic Romanians from neighboring villages, too. These clashes (also called Black March by some Hungarian authors) left several people dead and hundreds injured. The riots were broadcast nationally on Romanian television
, and were covered by media around the world.
It is still widely disputed what exactly triggered the riots. The nature of the involvement of the Romanian government and of Western media is also questioned.
Hungarian organisations strongly criticised the way the Romanian authorities and judicial system dealt with the suspected perpetrators, because significantly higher number of ethnic Hungarians and Roma were convicted after the clashes than Romanians. According to the US State Department Human Rights Report for 1993:
During the penal investigation and court trials that followed, two ethnic Hungarians (Pál Cseresznyés and Ernő Barabás) and 7 Roma were convicted.
of Romanian policemen and local government employees in areas with large Hungarian minorities or where Hungarians form a majority. Supporters of such opinions claim that the riots are part of a plan to separate part of Transylvania
from Romania and re-integrate it with Hungary
.
Most ethnic Hungarians in Romania and Hungarian public opinion in general maintain, however, that these rumours about Hungarian violence against Romanians and/or state institutions were unjustified or widely exaggerated. Hungarians also state that rumours about ethnic Hungarian violence were spread in order to undermine legitimate demands of ethnic Hungarians (such as language, cultural rights, or possible ethnic-based regional autonomy).
According to a 1990 report by Human Rights Watch
, "the authorities (...) failed to respond in an adequate manner to protect the citizens of Târgu Mureș". In this sense, the riots can be seen as a symptom of the fact that police and the law enforcement agencies in general were very weak and morally compromised at that time, as a consequence of the way the Communist regime had fallen. This opinion is reinforced by the similar pattern followed by some subsequent events (Piaţa Universităţii and the miners' invasion
of Bucharest
).
Western media, picking up the story from this documentary, presented the Mihăilă Cofariu footage in the same way, as a Hungarian being beaten by Romanians. This particular disinformation is often used in Romanian media to link various similar cases of anti-Romanian disinformation in Hungarian and Western media.
, 8 August 2005. Sok keserves küzdelem vár még ránk, a BBC interview with András Sütő, Hungarian writer. Artificial tensions from Budapest/Tensiuni artificiale de la Budapesta, article in Ziua
. Hungarian prosecutors do not accept Cofariu's hit man turn over/Procurorii unguri nu vor sa-l dea pe agresorul lui Cofariu, article in România Liberă
.
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
with an ethnically mixed population that was almost equally distributed between Romanians and Hungarians after the fall of the communist regime
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...
in December 1989. In March 1990, short-lived, but violent clashes occurred there between the two ethnic groups in the town, involving ethnic Romanians from neighboring villages, too. These clashes (also called Black March by some Hungarian authors) left several people dead and hundreds injured. The riots were broadcast nationally on Romanian television
Televiziunea Româna
Televiziunea Română , more commonly referred to as TVR , is the short name for Societatea Românǎ de Televiziune ; acronym: SRTV. SRTV is the national state-owned public service television broadcaster of Romania...
, and were covered by media around the world.
It is still widely disputed what exactly triggered the riots. The nature of the involvement of the Romanian government and of Western media is also questioned.
The position of Human Rights Watch World Report for 1990
In March, violence broke out between ethnic Hungarians and Romanians in the Transylvanian city of Târgu Mureș. On March 19, the headquarters of the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR) was attacked by a large group of ethnic Romanians. The police and army did not respond to the UDMR's calls for protection until several hours after the attack began. Many ethnic Hungarians trapped inside were seriously injured.
On the following morning, some 15,000 ethnic Hungarians gathered in the town square to protest the previous day's events. A group of approximately 3,000 ethnic Romanians hostile to the Hungarians' demands for autonomy began to gather on one side of the square in the early afternoon. Tensions escalated as word spread that buses of ethnic Romanian peasants from neighboring villages were heading toward town to support the Romanians in the square. By 2:30 p.m., the Chief of Police gave assurances to ethnic Romanian and Hungarian leaders in the square that the police had blocked off entrances to the city. However, unconfirmed reports indicated that the police allowed buses of ethnic Romanians through the roadblocks. Romanian peasants from villages outside Târgu Mureş arrived in the town center long after the roads should have been closed, and joined the Romanians already in the square.
Around 5:00 p.m., violence erupted between ethnic Romanians and ethnic Hungarians, breaking the single line of 50 police that the authorities had sent to divide the two groups. Although the police and army had been made aware of the potential for violence by both Hungarian and Romanian leaders, who had made numerous reports of the escalating tensions in the square, the authorities once again failed to respond in an adequate manner to protect the citizens of Târgu Mureș.
Hungarian organisations strongly criticised the way the Romanian authorities and judicial system dealt with the suspected perpetrators, because significantly higher number of ethnic Hungarians and Roma were convicted after the clashes than Romanians. According to the US State Department Human Rights Report for 1993:
The UDMRDemocratic Union of Hungarians in RomaniaThe Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania, is the main political organisation representing the ethnic Hungarians of Romania....
condemned the Supreme CourtHigh Court of Cassation and JusticeThe High Court of Cassation and Justice is Romania's supreme court, and the court of last resort. It is the equivalent of France's Cour de cassation and serves a similar function to other courts of cassation around the world...
's June 7 rejection of an appeal in the case of Pal Cseresznyés, an ethnic Hungarian serving a 10-year sentence for attempted murder as a result of his involvement in the Târgu Mureș incidents of March 1990. Cseresznyés participated in the savage beating of an ethnic Romanian, which an international journalist captured on film. The UDMR's complaint centered on the length of his sentence and on the fact that he was the only one of those filmed who was brought to trial. The court maintained that, regardless of the fates of the others involved, Cseresznyes had received a fair trial and was guilty as charged. Thus it found no legal reason to grant an appeal.
The casualties
The balance of clashes is 5 dead (2 ethnic Romanians and 3 ethnic Hungarians), and 278 injured.During the penal investigation and court trials that followed, two ethnic Hungarians (Pál Cseresznyés and Ernő Barabás) and 7 Roma were convicted.
Emblematic victims
There were victims on both sides, two of them receiving the most attention:- On 19 March 1990, the Hungarian writer András SütőAndrás SütoAndrás Sütő was an ethnic Hungarian writer and politician in Romania, one of the leading Hungarian writers in the 20th century.-Early life and education:...
was seriously beaten when ethnic Romanians attacked the offices of the Democratic Union of HungariansDemocratic Union of Hungarians in RomaniaThe Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania, is the main political organisation representing the ethnic Hungarians of Romania....
(UDMR). With several bones broken and his eyes injured he was carried to the Bucharest Military Hospital, then, later, by a military aircraft to BudapestBudapestBudapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
, HungaryHungaryHungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, where his life was saved, but he retained a permanent eye injury. The attackers were never officially identified, or convicted. - On 20 March 1990, Mihăilă Cofariu, one of the ethnic Romanians from Ibănești village was severely beaten until unconsciousness and even after. As a consequence, he remained neurologically disabled. The event was presented in international media as a Hungarian being beaten by Romanians. Mihăilă Cofariu was brought in coma to the county's Emergency Hospital and he spent several months in hospitals in Romania and Germany. One of the perpetrators, ethnic Hungarian Pál Cseresznyés, was tried, convicted, and sentenced to 10 years in prison, but was released in 1996 by Romanian president Emil ConstantinescuEmil ConstantinescuEmil Constantinescu was President of Romania from 1996 to 2000.He graduated from the law school of the University of Bucharest, and subsequently started a career as a geologist...
, as an act of reconciliation. The other convicted perpatrator, Barabas Erno, emigrated to Hungary. He has also received a 10-year imprisonment sentence, but the Hungarian authorities denied all extradition requests from the Romanian authorities.
Dispute over the causes
The prevalent opinion among the Romanian public is that the incidents were triggered by direct attacks by ethnic Hungarians against Romanian institutions, symbols, statues and policemen. Certain Romanians link these events with the killings during the Romanian Revolution of 1989Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...
of Romanian policemen and local government employees in areas with large Hungarian minorities or where Hungarians form a majority. Supporters of such opinions claim that the riots are part of a plan to separate part of Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
from Romania and re-integrate it with Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
.
Most ethnic Hungarians in Romania and Hungarian public opinion in general maintain, however, that these rumours about Hungarian violence against Romanians and/or state institutions were unjustified or widely exaggerated. Hungarians also state that rumours about ethnic Hungarian violence were spread in order to undermine legitimate demands of ethnic Hungarians (such as language, cultural rights, or possible ethnic-based regional autonomy).
Romanian government involvement
The nature of the involvement of the Romanian government is also disputed. The official account is that the government quickly succeeded in calming the situation and ended the clashes. However:- Many members of the Hungarian minority claim that the government was purposely slow to act, failing to stem the violence at the beginning and thus responsible for its escalation. They allegedly support their arguments with filmed scenes, where police or other representatives of the authorities overlook some misdoings. They also criticise the fact that the vast majority of persons taken under custody after the events were ethnic Hungarians, which, in their opinion, suggests an ethnic bias.
- Many members of the Romanian majority claim that the government did not intervene fast enough to protect the population, and that clearly identified Hungarian criminals were not condemned.
According to a 1990 report by Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
, "the authorities (...) failed to respond in an adequate manner to protect the citizens of Târgu Mureș". In this sense, the riots can be seen as a symptom of the fact that police and the law enforcement agencies in general were very weak and morally compromised at that time, as a consequence of the way the Communist regime had fallen. This opinion is reinforced by the similar pattern followed by some subsequent events (Piaţa Universităţii and the miners' invasion
Mineriad
See also The 1990s: the rise and decline of miners' unionsA Mineriad is the term used to name any of the successive violent interventions of miners in Bucharest. These interventions were generally seen as aimed at wrestling policy changes or simply material advantages from the current political...
of Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
).
Western media involvement
The quality of Western media coverage of the riots is contested by many Romanians. An often-cited example is the gruesome footage of Mihăilă Cofariu mentioned above who was presented as a Hungarian being beaten by Romanians in the documentary 'And the walls came tumbling down: Bad Neighbours', directed by Peter Swain and produced by ethnic Hungarian Paul Neuberg. According to its director, the filming crew arrived in Transylvania after the events and most footages, including the one of Mihăilă Cofariu, were provided by the Hungarian producer team, who let them believe that Cofariu was in fact a Hungarian being beaten by Romanians. Also, during filming, the crew had no contact at all with any ethnic Romanian, all the documentation being gathered only from Hungarian sources, including some Hungarian contacts from the political scene.Western media, picking up the story from this documentary, presented the Mihăilă Cofariu footage in the same way, as a Hungarian being beaten by Romanians. This particular disinformation is often used in Romanian media to link various similar cases of anti-Romanian disinformation in Hungarian and Western media.
External links
Christoffer M. Andersen, Resurgent Romanian Nationalism: In the Wake of the Interethnic Clashes in Tirgu Mures March 1990 (PDF). September 2005. Senior thesis in politics and Society, New Anglo-American College, Prague. Tirgu Mures 1990 – rememorarea unei drame neelucidate ("Târgu Mureș 1990 – remembering some unelucidated dramas"), article of divers.ro. Mihai Mincan, Laurențiu Mihu, Adevarul despre cele trei zile blestemate ("The truth about three reprobate days"), article in Evenimentul ZileiEvenimentul Zilei
Evenimentul Zilei is one of the leading newspapers in Romania. Based in Bucharest, the Romanian-language daily has a paid daily circulation of 110,000...
, 8 August 2005. Sok keserves küzdelem vár még ránk, a BBC interview with András Sütő, Hungarian writer. Artificial tensions from Budapest/Tensiuni artificiale de la Budapesta, article in Ziua
Ziua
Ziua was a major Romanian daily newspaper published in Bucharest. It was published in Romanian with a fairly sizeable and often informative English section. Ziua was founded in 1994 by Sorin Roşca Stănescu, eventually becoming foreign-owned...
. Hungarian prosecutors do not accept Cofariu's hit man turn over/Procurorii unguri nu vor sa-l dea pe agresorul lui Cofariu, article in România Liberă
România Libera
România Liberă is one of the leading newspapers in Romania. Based in Bucharest, the Romanian-language daily has a paid daily circulation of 40,000....
.