More than one million ethnic Hungarians live in Romania, mostly in three counties in central Transylvania, a territory at the foot of the Carpathian mountains that was run by Budapest until 1918 but is now far from the Hungarian border.

The ethnic Hungarian community in Transylvania has been a frequent bone of contention between the countries and tensions rose in February in a dispute over the use of the flag, which is light blue with a yellow stripe, star and crescent moon.

A Romanian official insisted it be removed from Covasna county’s administration office, and the argument escalated to the point where Romania’s foreign minister threatened to expel Hungary’s ambassador.

Tensions have since eased, and both countries have sought to play down the dispute. Crowds displayed the flag in several rallies across Transylvania on Friday to mark the 165th anniversary of Hungary’s 1848 revolution against the Hapsburgs.

About 10,000 people, many in carriages and riding horses adorned with the flag, rallied in Targu Secuiesc, a small town in Covasna county full of pastel-shaded houses known as Kezdivasarhely in Hungarian.

Some wore traditional uniforms and played old folk songs accompanied by accordions and violins.

“We celebrated a day of freedom,” said Baldizsar Bela, 57, one of the march organizers. “But we also asked to be heard.”

Tamas Sandor, a senior official of Romania’s ethnic Hungarian party, UDMR, told reporters at the rally: “The message after 165 years is that … we want to get organized ourselves and self-govern with moderns means, with ideas and arguments.”

Under communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, many ethnic Romanians were moved to traditionally Hungarian areas in an attempt to dilute their influence. But since his overthrow in 1989, the community has gained more rights, including a school system in their native language.

Romania’s leftist government is considering reorganizing local government into bigger regions to make it more efficient.

Many ethnic Hungarians say they want that to include a specific region of their own, where they would have a greater say over administration and education.

Some Hungarians living outside the country who have been granted dual citizenship by Hungary, including many living in Romania, could be eligible to vote in Hungary’s 2014 election.

If they become eligible, they could become an important swing factor as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban tries to hang on to power, with an economy that languishes in recession.

(Additional reporting by Luiza Ilie; Editing by Pravin Char)

The European Union has criticised leftist Prime Minister Victor Ponta for his campaign to oust Basescu, his long-time political rival. The issue is due to be put to a national referendum on July 29.

Basescu, whose popularity has plummeted from 65 percent seven years ago to around 10 percent now, found vocal support in Cluj, a stronghold of his ally and former Prime Minister Emil Boc.

Many banners read: “Want a European state led by Captain Basescu” – a reference to Basescu’s career as a captain in Romania’s communist-era commercial fleet before the 1989 revolution that overthrew dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

“I ask all Romanians, regardless their opinion, to come and vote,” Basescu told a gathering of about 10,000 who braved temperatures exceeding 91 degrees Fahrenheit (33 Celsius) in a central Cluj square. “I’m confident you’ll say no to abuse, you’ll say no to this coup against rule of law in Romania.”

The impeachment attempt is just the latest clash between Romania’s two dominant political forces – Ponta’s Socialists, the reformed heirs of the Communists led by late dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, and Basescu’s Democrat-Liberal allies.

It has rattled markets, sending the leu currency to a record low last week, and raised fears that a country ranked as the EU’s second poorest and third most corrupt may be faltering in its march to catch up with the richer West.

Ponta accuses Basescu of blocking government reforms and abusing his post to grant favours to his conservative allies.

On Friday, a day after EU leaders expressed concern over the state of democracy in Romania, Ponta said he had responded in writing to a list of demands from the European Commission.

But he balked at giving a clear signal of whether he would work to undo both an emergency government decree and a separate law scrapping a 50 percent turnout threshold for referendums.

All eyes are now on a tangle of legal statutes that have blurred the referendum rules, most importantly over the turnout.

Basescu would have a better chance of winning with the threshold rule in place, because many in the Black Sea country of 19 million people could stay away, making the vote invalid.

But Ponta’s camp are considering extending the referendum to a two-day vote, instead of one, which should increase turnout.

RAGING RIVALS

In Cluj, a city of about 320,000 people with a well-preserved historic centre dotted with mediaeval buildings, Basescu’s supporters expressed anger at government moves to reduce the power of the constitutional court.

European Parliament head has Martin Schulz dubbed these and changes at other institutions “very dubious”.

“We back democracy, it’s a shame how this government throws all achievements of the past years in the trash bin. One can’t simply sack the president and destroy democracy overnight,” said Mircea Stefan, a 64 year-old pensioner, a former mechanical engineer from Cluj.

Elsewhere there were smaller anti-Basescu rallies, including one in Bucharest that attracted hundreds of army officers sacked under an austerity drive backed by the suspended president.

They chanted: “Down with Basescu,” and “Go away, Ceausescu calls for you.”

Parliament, which is dominated by Ponta’s Social Liberals(USL), will discuss the referendum laws on Tuesday and Wednesday and also consider extending the voting to two days.

Analysts said the referendum could still go either way.

“In light of new developments … and a longer voting period in the referendum, Basescu’s chances have fallen steeply,” political analyst Cristian Patrasconiu said.

“But we need to remember: Basescu is a formidable sprinter, as when he decided to run for Bucharest mayor in 2000. He jumped from single digits in popularity before announcing his bid to an outright majority at the ballot after just two weeks.”

(Writing by Radu Marinas; Editing by Michael Winfrey/Ruth Pitchford)

As I prepared pictures to submit to a contest I could not stop thinking that all these past years the main photo contests chose their winners from among the pictures depicting wars and conflicts. I think that this year will be the same, due to the many bloody events around the world.

I do not know why those pictures are still chosen, they show horrors. They show the pain of the helpless victims and the joy of the gun-toting bullies. They show, some in a dignified way, some in a gruesome way, humanity at its worst, people killed by other people. They will haunt your memory; they will be published again and again. The photographers took great risks to shoot those images; we praise them for their pictures and courage to be where others do not dare to go. There were amazing photos depicting war and those photographers deserve to be praised for their work. But do their images really belong to a pictures contest? Does anyone think about their impact in the future, about their impact on young photographers? Was Susan Sontag right in her last book, “Regarding the pain of others”?

Throughout those years, many young photographers looked at those pictures and what have they learned? They have learned that to be a great photographer and to make a great picture you must go to a conflict or a war zone, because you get instant recognition. But that’s built on others’ ordeals. Generations of photographers thought this way, even today, in an easily accessible conflict zone, the place is swarming with photographers, sometimes they outnumber the combatants.

What happens in a war zone must be documented, the story must be told, because we are supposed to learn from mistakes, we are supposed to intervene if something happens against humanity. The rest of the world must see what is going on elsewhere.

I have been shooting photographs because of this; in the hope that what I picture today will never happen again. But I see that it happens again and again and again.

At some point after being in Croatia in the 90’s I stopped going to conflict zones, because I felt that it will become part of me. I felt that being horrified at what was going on I might take a gun instead of my camera someday. At another point in my life, I went again to cover conflicts and wars. I do not know why I did it again. I think that at the time I felt that I had learned enough. I could do it without feeling guilty that I was taking pictures of others’ pain, pictures which were published, thus being appreciated as good images, which told the story well. I felt the conflict would not affect me anymore.

But passing through some hot points of our world, I learned that this bloody merry-go-round is unstoppable. And it is still affecting me through all the pictures coming out of the conflicts I see today.

Instead of praising life, you realize how insignificant it is in front of a war, or simply in front of another person who holds a weapon in their hands. You slowly start to despise it. There is nothing you can do to stop this.

I am writing this because I hope that something can be done. We, as photographers, cannot stop a war. We, as photographers, cannot stop taking pictures of events as they happen. But a photo contest could decide what to do with those images of war. They should mention them; show them to the world, but in a different category. Not putting them as the “best”.

This is just a thought which came to me, thinking of the many young, aspiring photographers. Maybe in this way we can turn the attention of the new generations of photographers to capture life and not death in their pictures.

My colleague Bogdan Cristel had covered it in past years. But I could not as I was assigned to edit and process the World Ski Championship, which takes place during the same period. Last year, I again edited skiing and thought that this year would be the same: me editing and Bogdan covering it. In January however, I was surprised when the organizers changed the date, providing me with the possibility to go and cover this story.

I remember as a child I once saw a pig being slaughtered, but my memory is blurred. As a city boy, living with my mother on the third floor and my grandparents on the first floor of an apartment block, I never experienced what was normal for village folk. For villagers, pigs, cows, chicken, ducks and geese were slaughtered in the backyard to provide food for the entire family. For me, all livestock came from butchers or supermarkets, frozen or fresh, nicely labeled and packaged.

What was of interest to me was how they slaughter the pigs. I wondered if they were using electricity according to European Union regulations or following a traditional method and using a knife? I discovered that traditional method is allowed during the festival, so people can see how it was done in the past.

As this was the sixth edition of the festival, the organizers and participants knew what to do. A few pigs with numbers painted on their backs were drawn by the teams and the slaughter began. The first two were killed using electricity, in keeping with the European Union standards. To drain the blood, knives were used to stab the pig in the heart. The splashing blood was quickly collected into buckets.

I have seen blood during various armed conflict assignments, but somehow the stench of warm blood, the pig’s sharp and brief squealing made me a bit sick. I went out from the enclosure where the slaughtering took place to breathe cold, fresh air and followed the contestants dragging the carcasses to their preparation tables.

I returned just in time to witness a traditional knife slaughtering. The EU was right; it is a bit too much for a city person to see. The pigs squealed loudly, somehow sensing something bad would happen to them. They ran around the enclosure but the group of men caught and immobilized one of them. Everything was unexpectedly fast; the pig was slaughtered in seconds and the blood was collected to be used later for a special type of sausage. The men shared a few strong drinks, then they carried out the carcass to burn the skin and remove the hair.

After washing the carcass to remove the burned skin, some chopped it with axes on the ground. Others cut it with a saw and some hung the pig and cut it along the backbone. There were others who cut it along the belly. Each participant used their own style, depending on what they wanted to prepare, as teams were sharing half a carcass each.

More bad smells oozed in to the air as smoke billowed from the many open fires where pieces of pork were boiled or grilled. All teams were busy chopping, mashing, grinding and mixing various spices with the meat with their hands and preparing various specialties, including all kind of sausages.

A few pieces were quickly grilled or fried in pork fat instead of oil and were offered to the spectators to down together with small glasses of palinca; a strong triple distilled plum or grape brandy. This is called “pomana porcului,” or the “pig’s alms,” a tradition in which the pig owner thanks everybody for helping in the preparations.

There is a lot of work required to prepare pork specialties. You have to deal with about 50-70 kilograms (110-150 pounds) of raw meat and it is not easy. Some teams finished at around four in the afternoon, after a full eight hours of work.

I had rushed out in the morning without breakfast, thinking that I would have a bite at the festival. Strangely, I was not hungry the whole day. The roaming around during various stages of the preparation and the smell and sight of so much meat had killed my appetite.

In the end, I left with red eyes from the smoke and without eating anything. In this fairly remote village, the 3G wireless network was not working well so I spent about two hours sending the pictures. During that time, I got hungry.

I went to the local restaurant and ordered a portion of goulash, a traditional Transylvanian beef dish.