New national day of remembrance: Why Romania of the global persecution of Christians intend

The Bucharest city center shines with a blood-red this Sunday: The Parliament, the seat of government, the main administration building, the arch of triumph to commemorate the First world war, and a historically significant Palace to the North-West of the Romanian capital, are illuminated from dusk until midnight in red.

Michael Martens

a correspondent for Southeast European countries with headquarters in Vienna, Austria.

it provides a in June, the act passed by the Parliament, according to which the 16. August each year is dedicated to in Romania, henceforth the commemoration of persecuted Christians all over the world.

The day of remembrance to raise awareness of the violence and persecution, which were exposed to Christians around the world and even today are stated in the Text of the by a large majority, approved the law. On the occasion of this day is to celebrate all over the country in the future every year to the public memorial, Church services and similar events.

The 16. August has not been determined from coincidence of the date of the memorial day. 15. August 1714, were beheaded by the Wallachian Prince Constantin Brancoveanu, his Advisor, and his four sons in Istanbul on the orders of Sultan Ahmed the third. The possibility to save your lives by a transition from Christianity to Islam, had rejected it. Were killed because Prince Brancoveanu, whose nearly 25 years of the reign experienced the Wallachia, a flowering time, secretly contact to Russia's Tsar Peter the Great had made, the arch-Nemesis of the Ottoman Empire.

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Brancoveanu wanted to escape the Wallachia, a reasonably independent, but the Sultan tribute paying Principality in the South of the present-day EU state of Romania, the sovereignty of the Ottomans. It cost him the life. For their refusal to save themselves by converting to Islam, the life, was canonized as the Prince and his sons in 1992 by the Orthodox Church of Romania to the "Holy martyrs".

In the calendar of the Romanian Orthodoxy, of the was 16. August registered a long time previously as a holiday. 15. August, the actual anniversary of his death, came as a day of remembrance of the question, because he is occupied by the Church in Romania by assumption.

a Regular guest at "Sputnik Romania"

in the Future, the 16. August in Romania, but it is not alone a religious but also a national memorial day. The Initiator of the law, Daniel Gheorghe, a member of the "Partidul National Liberal", of the national liberal party, which is also the political home of the officially non-party Romanian President Klaus Johannis. Gheorghe represents carefully formulated, trenchant views. The politician, Born in 1985, is a proponent of nationalist positions, warns of the "politically correct lies" that Europe today is characterised by, allegedly, also emerged as a staunch opponent of a state recognition of same-sex marriage.