25 Years Since the Fall of Communism in Romania

On December 22nd, 2014, 25 years since the fall of Communism in Romania, the new president of the country awarded a decoration to a victim of the Romanian Gulag.

România Internațional, 23.12.2014, 13:47

Starting in Timisoara, the first Romanian city to rise against an obsolete and oppressive regime, events commemorating 25 years since the anti-Communist Revolution of December 1989 have continued this week everywhere in the country. In Bucharest, ceremonies were held at the Monument to the Heroes of the Revolution, as well as at the Romanian Television. Bells have tolled in churches all across Romania, to honour those who paid in blood this country’s liberation from the communist oppression. On December 22nd, 1989, people could hear on the radio the announcement that the Ceausescu regime was over. Here is Claudiu Iordache, the director of the Romanian Revolution Institute, recalling the role played by the public radio:

“ Radio Romania’s role was crucial back than, because all Romanians had a receiver at home and everybody could hear on the radio that in Timisoara, Bucharest and other big cities people rebelled against and eventually dismantled a regime that had seemed impossible to destroy”.

The new president of Romania, Klaus Iohannis, participated in the ceremony held in University Square, where he laid a wreath in memory of the victims of the 1989 Revolution. After the fall of Ceausescu’s dictatorship, the Square became a symbol of the liberation from communism. For months in a row the place saw large scale rallies against the first post-communist power, incapable of proving it really wanted to do away will the reminiscence of the old regime.

On December 22nd this year, President Klaus Iohannis chose to award the first decoration since he took over his term to the president of the Association of Former Political Detainees in Romania, Octova Bjoza. The new president of the country has promised that respect for all Romanian values will characterize his term in office. He has also stressed that a nation cannot have a future without a past. The communist regime ruled through crime, fear, and abuse, and it destroyed the elites, and that is why the guilty ones must be brought to justice. Klaus Iohannis.

“ Through this decoration I acknowledge and honour the sacrifice and bravery of those men and women who suffered and died for freedom during the communist regime and during the revolution of December 1989”.

In turn, the president of the Association of Former Political Detainees in Romania, Octav Bjoza, said that the decoration acknowledges the sacrifice of an entire social group, that of people killed, imprisoned or oppressed during the communist dictatorship. Octav Bjoza:

“ Most of the former political detainees and of those who were deported from Romania are no longer alive. This award honors their fight and sacrifice.”

Such a gesture may not seem much, but it is in a country where communism was officially condemned as a criminal regime, but nobody has been held accountable for that yet.