March 15 – That’s how Hungarians celebrated the national day – Photo gallery
Celebrations were held nationwide and in Hungarian communities abroad to mark the anniversary of Hungary’s 1848-49 revolution and freedom fight, on Wednesday. We collected the best pictures, please check the photo gallery:
Budapest
SZEGED
Hódmezővásárhely
Carpathian basin
March 15 commemorations were also held in ethnic Hungarian communities of neighbouring countries.
Several hundred people celebrated the revolution’s anniversary in Bratislava, organised by local Hungarian organisations and the Hungarian embassy.
Representatives of Hungarian organisations and ethnic minority self governments in Croatia laid wreaths of commemoration at a monument to poet Sándor Petőfi in Zagreb. The ceremony was attended by deputy state secretary at the Hungarian prime minister’s office Péter Szilágyi.
Canada’s Hungarian community held a commemoration in Vancouver’s Hungarian House, attended by state secretary Árpád János Potápi.
March 15 commemorations were also held in ethnic Hungarian communities of neighbouring countries. State Secretary Levente Magyar spoke in Berehove (Beregszász), in western Ukraine, and said that the “glorious events of the distant past convey messages that are still valid today”.
Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén attended a celebration in northern Serbia’s Subotica (Szabadka) organised by Vojvodina’s VMSZ party. In his address, he said that Hungary has similar challenges now to the ones it faced in 1848; “for example when Hungary’s sovereignty is questioned in Brussels, telling us whom we should live together with”.
Hunor Kelemen, head of Romania’s ethnic Hungarian RMDSZ party, spoke at a commemoration in Salonta (Nagyszalonta, western Romania), and said that freedom in Romania is “not a rock-hard building but a garden which… needs to be recreated year after year; it may have old trees which call for pruning, and sometimes you need to plant new ones, too”.
Romania is at crossroads and it needs to chose “between rule of law, parliamentary democracy or an invisible but authoritarian power”, Kelemen said.
Featured photo: MTI/AP/Vadim Ghirda
Source: MTI