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 Sfântu 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 each other 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 Sfântu Gheorghe, Lendava (Lendva), Osijek (Eszék), Mukachevo (Munkács), Dunajská 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 amidst the big hurdles and uncertainties we faced in history.” “And above all, we Hungarians are proud to be free,” the minister said, calling for peace in Ukraine.
Addressing a commemoration in Oradea (Nagyvárad) later on Friday, Szijjártó said Hungarians’ freedom meant “we can decide about our own future”. He said the revolutionaries in 1848 had fought for “the obvious, clear and much desired goals of freedom, peace and consensus, goals that we want here, today, too,” “We have always been ready to fight for our freedom and independence, even when facing the biggest, most dangerous and brutal and massive forces including the Ottoman and the Habsburg empires and later the Germans and the Soviets. We took up the fight against them, and stood our course,” Szijjártó said.