Jan Slota’s nationalist party SNS plans to confront Hungarian extremist party Jobbik in Komarno; Police on standby
Chairman of the nationalist SNS party, Jan Slota, is claiming that on Friday 4 June (on the 90th anniversary of the Treaty of Trianon) supporters of Hungarian extremist party Jobbik will meet in Komarno to protest against the treaty that changed the borders of Central Europe, and deprived the former kingdom of 60% of its territory, including over 3 million ethnic Hungarians.
In opposition, the SNS are planning to head to Komarno to install a Trianon memorial, Slota informed at a news conference on Tuesday. They plan to put the memorial on the Slovak-Hungarian border. “To show the Hungarian nation where the Trianon border is. By being present there, we want to show that Komarno is a Slovak town,” explained Slota.
According to information obtained by TASR, members of the civic organisation Tukor are going to meet in Komarno on Friday, where they plan to unveil a memorial column to mark the occasion. Unofficially, there is also talk of Hungarian protesters gathering at the statue of St. Stephen [the statue was a source of friction last year when Hungarian President Laszlo Solymon was refused entry to Slovakia for the unveiling], but Jobbik has not officially confirmed these plans.
Spokeswoman of the Regional Police in Nitra, Renata Cuhakova, said that the police are counting on any eventuality but that they had received no information about another event taking place alongside the one announced by the SNS. “We’re ready to take steps to ensure public order in the town,” she said.
Nonetheless, representatives of Komarno said the SNS has not yet been granted permission to march through the town, due to formal shortcomings in the request they submitted.
The SNS event is being co-organised by cultural heritage organisation Matica Slovenska, but its local branch distances itself from it, saying they haven’t even been informed about it. “This is an activity of our central office, we don’t want to have anything to do with it. We avoid politically-oriented events. We are a cultural institution,” said chairman of Matica Slovenska in Komarno, Jozef Cernek.
[Komarno is the Slovak half of what prior to WWI was one city called Komarom, which is the name of the Hungarian part on the south side of the River Danube].