Almost three decades have passed,
\nbut Romania is still to shed light on the darkest episode of its post-communist
\nhistory. Last month, the interim prosecutor general Bogdan Licu appealed a
\nSupreme Court ruling to send back to the prosecutor’s office the file of the
\nso-called miners’ raids of June 1990. Earlier, the High Court of Cassation and
\nJustice had decided to return the case for a reassessment of the indictment,
\nwhich it deemed non-legal. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Two years ago, military prosecutors
\nfinalised investigations in the miners’ raids and indicted 14 persons,
\nincluding some high-profile names, such as Romania’s former president Ion
\nIliescu, the prime minister at the time, Petre Roman, his deputy, Gelu
\nVoican-Voiculescu, and the then director of the Romanian Intelligence Service,
\nVirgil Magureanu. They were charged with masterminding and directly
\ncoordinating the attack against the protesters in the University Square, in the
\ncentre of Bucharest, who were peacefully expressing their political opinions,
\nwhich were at odds with those of the majority in power at that time. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
On 20th of May 1990, five
\nmonths after the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu’s communist dictatorship, his former
\nminister from the 1970s, Ion Iliescu, now seen as the leader of the anti-communist
\nrevolution, won the country’s first free
\nelections with some 85% of the votes. His party, a heterogeneous combination of
\nreal revolutionaries and second-rate communists, had also won two thirds of the
\nseats in Parliament. Faced with the harsh verdict of the election results, the
\nprotesters, including many students, who had occupied the University Square
\nsince April, declaring it an area free of neo-communism, had begun to leave.
\nOf the tens of thousands of exuberant and peaceful protesters, only several
\ndozens people on hunger strike had now remained in the square. The police began
\nto evacuate them on the evening of 13th of June using
\ndisproportionate force, an image reminiscent of the reprisals during the
\nrevolution. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
It’s still not clear today if the
\npeople who reacted by engaging in street fights with the police and occupying
\nthe headquarters of the interior ministry and the public television station
\nreally did have a connection with the people who had protested earlier in the Square.
\nIliescu and his people described them as legionnaires, a term referring to
\nthe Romanian far right in the inter-war years, and, although the army had
\nrestored order, called on the population to rescue the democracy under
\nthreat. The miners from the Jiu Valley, in the centre, responded to the call.
\nThey controlled the capital for only two days, the 14th and the 15th
\nof June, taking the place of any legal authority. Enough time though to leave
\nbehind 1,300 people wounded, more than 1,000 abusive arrests and at least 6
\npeople dead. A vandalised university and ransacked headquarters of the
\nopposition parties and independent newspapers complete the picture of the
\ninvasion. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Five years ago, the European Court
\nof Human Rights ruled that Romania was to continue investigations into the
\ncase, while the former prosecutor general Laura Codruta Kovesi admitted that
\nthe inquiry into the miners’ riot was one of the biggest dissatisfactions in
\nthe entire history of the public ministry. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bucharest commemorates 29th anniversary of the so-called \u201cminers raids of June 1990.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":82225,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37738],"tags":[28989],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-82224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-in-the-news","tag-miners"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n