A government body tasked with investigating crimes committed by the communist regime on Thursday filed a criminal complaint over the death of 535 minors between 1970 and 1997 at a home for disabled children.
Data indicates that over half of the children hospitalized were ‘exterminated’ died at the facility in Moreni southern Romania, run by the Romanian state from malnutrition, bronchitis, pneumonia and squalid living conditions.
Between 1985 and 1989 (the year communism ended), three-quarters of 134 children transferred from institutions in the western city of Arad, 75% died, “most in the first months of hospitalization, due to serious malnutrition and lack of medical assistance,” investigators alleged.
The investigation claims “inhumane treatments and inhumane conditions” were systematically applied to abandoned infants, “leading to the death of hundreds of children and permanent suffering for the survivors.”
Images of emaciated children, abandoned in Romanian orphanages, horrified the world after the overthrow and execution of the country’s communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989.
His policy of forcing women to bear at least five children caused the placement of more than 150,000 children into squalid state-run institutions or orphanages such as the one in Moreni
The Moreni home on the edge of a forest initially functioned as a surgical and TB prevention hospital for children and was later transformed into a center for neuropsychiatric children and, finally, into a center for “irrecuperable deficiencies”.
“Between 1970 and 1997, the institution became “a place where minors were exterminated” with mortality rates frequently exceeding 70% of hospitalizations, especially from 1985-1989.
The Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes said Thursday it had submitted six volumes of investigation to the Prosecutor’s Office in the city of Ploiesti.
“The Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes …. (IICCMER) filed a new criminal complaint, in a case investigating the death of 497 minors, between 1970 and 1997, to which are added 38 who were older than 18 (total 535 deaths) at the Moreni-Ţuicani Home-Hospital for the Irrecuperable “, it said Thursday in a press release.
It said the complaint focuses on inhumane and degrading treatment applied to minors at the home which was run by the Romanian state.
The 1715-page report “proves the existence of ill-treatment in the Moreni-Ţuicani Home-Hospital for the Disabled,” officials said.
The investigation also identified individuals responsible for the crimes who were “involved in the organization and management of the inhumane regime applied in the center.”
Dr. Florin Soare, a historian and coordinator of the investigation: “I consider that what happened to those children from Moreni-Ţuicani is absolutely inhuman and deeply reprehensible. From the evidence we gathered, it is clear that these children had no chance of survival under the conditions in which they were kept and treated.
“Their suffering is a mirror of the cruelty with which the oppressive communist regime acted.”
Prof. Dr. Daniel Sandru, executive president of IICCMER, urged prosecutors to treat the investigation with ‘speed and responsibility.’
“It is an urgent priority to talk about justice for the more than 15,000 victims of the Hospital Homes, innocent children turned into symbols of cruelty by the illegitimate and criminal communist regime.
“The Romanian state must recognize and honor not only the memory of those killed in these places, but also those who survived, offering them, as a form of moral reparation, the status of victims of communism,” Daniel Sandru said.
Here is a link to the full investigation, coordinated by Dr. Florin Soare on the institution’s website.
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