March 15 – That’s how Hungarians celebrated the national day – Photo gallery

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