Every year in
\nlate December Romanians commemorate the victims of the December 1989
\nanti-Communist revolution. Some still recollect those events with grief and
\nsorrow although 29 years have passed ever since. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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The Romanian
\nPresident Klaus Iohannis laid a wreath of flowers at the Memorial Cross in the University
\nSquare in Bucharest to honor the memory of the victims, and senators and
\ndeputies observed a moment of silence. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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On Thursday the
\ncity of Timisoara, in the west, marked Victory Day. On December 20th,
\n1989, after several days of repression by the Communist authorities, the people
\nof Timisoara took to the streets in great numbers. The army withdrew to the
\nbarracks and from the balcony of the Opera House in Timisoara the people
\ndeclared Timisoara the first city of Romania free of Communism. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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To mark this
\nmoment, siren calls were heard in downtown Timisoara where the anti-Communist
\nrevolution sparked 29 years ago. It all started from a spontaneous protest
\nagainst the authorities’ attempt to evacuate reformist pastor Laszlo Tokes, as
\nhe had been critical of the Communist regime in the international press, which was
\ninterpreted, in the spirit of the epoch, as incitement to ethnic division.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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On December 17th,
\nthe protest extended to the center of the city, which became the main stage for
\nshouting anti-Communist slogans, which was literally inconceivable at the time.
\nFaced with such an unprecedented situation, the authorities ordered the army to
\ngo to the streets that were already teeming with informers of the Securitate
\npolitical police. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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A brutal
\nintervention followed and scores of people were shot. To wipe off the traces of
\nthe violent repression, the corpses were taken from the hospital morgue and
\ntransferred to Bucharest to be cremated, the ashes being thrown into the sewer
\nsystem as part of the operation symbolically called the Rose. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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On December 21st,
\nthe anti-Communist revolution extended to Bucharest and culminated on December
\n22nd with dictators Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu fleeing Bucharest. Subsequently,
\nthey were caught and shot dead on the very Christmas Day after a brief trial.
\nIn December 1989 more than one thousand people died and at least three thousand
\nwere wounded. 29 years on, the prosecutors’ investigation into those events has
\nnot been finalized and the culprits are still at large. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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Initially
\nclassified, the revolution file was reopened in 2017 after the judges decided
\nthat the previous investigations had been very superficial. Military
\nprosecutors announced the extension of criminal procedures, in rem, in relation
\nto crimes against humanity. Judges have shown that in order to keep the power,
\nthe new political and military power instated after 1989 caused the killing and
\narrest of a great number of people. The president of the Association ‘December
\n21, 1989’ Doru Maries says that the only thing that can be done for the
\nrevolution heroes is JUSTICE.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
29 years on, the heroes of the anti-Communist revolution in Romania are commemorated all over the country<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71365,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37738],"tags":[31351,28915,31366],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-80074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-in-the-news","tag-anti-communist-revolution","tag-bucharest","tag-nicolae-ceausescu"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n