A photo of a protester spraying a swastika on the European Union flag outside Romania’s Parliament has led to renewed calls for a far-right party to be outlawed.
The incident happened on Tuesday after dozens tried to storm the Parliament in protest at a debate on introducing the Covid pass in the workplace. The protest was organized by the nationalist Alliance for the Union of Romanians.
Anti-Semitism
The image was picked up in the international media which reported on the protest. Cars from the U.S. and Japanese embassies parked inside the Parliament perimeter were sprayed with paint as protesters rushed toward the building.
Alexandru Muraru, the government representative for combating anti-Semitism called the incident „flagrantly illegal. (It) needs to be punished swiftly and firmly,” he said Wednesday.
It is „insulting for the memory of those that lost their lives in the German concentration camps and their descendants.”
„It is an instigation to violence and hate and damaging to Romania’s reputation,” he said.
Romania passed a law in 2006 which bans fascist and racist organizations and symbols.
War criminals
Mr Muraru repeated his call for the AUR, the protest organizer, to be outlawed.
He called it „a neo-Legionary group which uses Parliament as a loudspeaker to broadcast admiring messages about war criminals.”
„Extremist messages in the Romanian Parliament are unacceptable… and only lead to xenophobic public incidents.”
The party which came from near nowhere to take fourth place in 2020 parliamentary elections is known being anti-vaccine and opposing Covid restrictions.
It talks about national ‚sovereignty,” favors reunification with neighboring Moldova and is wary of the-EU. It also talks about family values, and is implicitly anti-gay.
Holocaust
The Elie Wiesel International Committee for the Study of the Holocaust published a report in 2004 saying that Romanian authorities were responsible for the deaths of 280,000 to 380,000 Jews and 11,000 Roma from 1940 to 1944 during World War II.
Some 135,000 Jews living under Hungarian control in northern Transylvania were also killed in the Holocaust. Most surviving Jews emigrated to Israel under communism. There are about 3,000 Jews in Romania today.
Romania’s anti-Semitism czar praises law that makes study of Holocaust compulsory at school
