In 2019, the relationship of Romanians and Hungarians living in Romania was overshadowed by the conflict that happened in the Úz Valley military cemetery. The conflict was triggered when Dormánfalva from Bákó County built a memorial in the cemetery – belonging to Csíkszentmárton, a Hungarian village in Hargita County – to honour the Romanian soldiers supposedly buried there. The cemetery has been a subject of county border disputes for decades: both Bákó and Hargita counties consider the area as their own. This administrative debate culminated three years ago in cemetery closures, cemetery occupations, protests, nationalist manifestations, involving politics, civil society, various Romanian authorities and the media. In this study, I compare how the Hungarian and Romanian language print media from Szeklerland presented the events that led to the Romanian - Hungarian physical conflict in the Úzvölgy military cemetery, reflecting on what kind of interpretations of the reality was offered, represented in the local media of the two nations. Using Van Dijk’s critical discourse analysis, I compare the media discourse of the local Hungarian and Romanian newspapers, and the local and national political discourse presented in the media, and analyze the different definitions of reality represented in the media.
Keywords: media representation, classification struggles, paralell realities, interethnic conflicts, Úz Valley military cemetery
