Hungarian FM Szijjártó marks 1848 anniversary in Transylvania

The message of Hungary’s 1848 revolution is that Hungarians must join together and “each of them is counted on in improving our nation’s future”, the foreign minister said in Sfantu Gheorghe (Sepsiszentgyörgy), marking the 176th anniversary of the outbreak of the 1848-49 revolution and war of independence, on Friday.

Péter Szijjártó said Hungarians must join their forces in the interest of their nation and “act together, by helping one another in cooperation across the border”, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

At the same time, he said, there were “traitors paid by large powers to divide Hungarians in the mother country and beyond the borders”, adding that “all of them will end up being washed away by history” because “the ideal of the Hungarian nation does not exist without Sfantu Gheorghe (Sepsiszentgyörgy), Lendava (Lendva), Osijek (Eszék), Mukachevo (Munkács), Dunajska Streda (Dunaszerdahely), Senta (Zenta) and without the diaspora”.

“This is why it is our duty to firmly stand up for the rights of the Hungarian communities which we have done and will also do in future.”

At the commemoration of the battle of Simeria (Szemerja), Szijjártó said “we here stand together and declare that we are proud to be Hungarian”. “We are proud of what we have achieved through history. That we are the inheritors of a Christian culture which is older than a thousand years… we have continued to always exist as Hungarians midst the big hurdles and uncertainties we faced in history.”