There was anger on Monday at images of protesters clambering onto crosses that stand as memorials for the hundreds of Romanians who were shot dead in Bucharest during the bloody 1989 anti-communist revolt.
Protesters climbed on to crosses in University Square during a protest on Sunday, the scene of the fiercest fighting between government troops loyal to Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and unarmed protesters.
More than 1,100 died and 3,000 were injured during the revolution, most of them after Ceausescu fled on December 22. He was tried and executed on Christmas Day. In Bucharest, 564 people were killed, with most victims in their 20s, and some in their teens as armed forces turned their guns on people demanding freedom.
Romania has never properly investigated its 1989 revolution and who ordered the killing of demonstrators in an uprising which was usurped by second-tier communists. Those people and their acolytes continued to run the country for years even after communism collapsed. Their children and mentees still hold key positions in the justice and security systems, in politics and business and they support Romania’s new anti-Western radical right.
They supported a protest by thousands of demonstrators angry at last month’s cancelled elections over alleged Russian interference. But the rally turned ugly at some points, with a journalist assaulted and a TV car pelted with stones and urinated on.
In scenes in University Square, the heart of post 1989 pro-democracy protests, two protesters were pictured making fun of the victims atop the crosses, a symbol of the sacrifice made by the protesters.
Old Securitate agents are those who support Calin Georgescu who won the first round thanks to Russian interference according to declassified reports.
“The truth is that – if you are an old Securitate officer…. who shot at civilians during the Revolution or a militiaman who had the unpleasant task of bringing water tanks to wash off the blood off the road on December 22, 1989 – you can’t help but be irritated by the Memorial of the Heroes of the Revolution at University Square,” wrote Radu Motoc, a former press freedom activist.
“After all, those crosses remind you of what you did in those chaotic days, they mark the “place of the crime”, pay homage to your victims and, implicitly, accuse you. They accuse you only symbolically, of course – but this thing still annoys you, and you lose your good mood when you pass by.
“It ruins the peace offered by your generous pension, the comfort of impunity ensured by carefully pre-selected and brainwashed magistrates, the satisfaction of book launches where you meet with old comrades and where you preach the thesis of the “coup d’état orchestrated by external forces”.
But look, there is joy. Your successors, the younger offspring – … have achieved something wonderful. They have launched in new agitation-diversionary parties in politics, capable of entering the parliament, and capable of …occupying University Square.”
“And the benefit of an involuntary, but tasty gift for you: the desecration of that memorial that has irritated you for so long.”
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