Romanian revolutionaries demand closure
Photo: Flickr.com/[sic!]ut.at
The 1989 Romanian revolution left 1,000 people dead, thousands injured and culminated in the execution of former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Last year a European Court judgement demanded that all documents related to the bloody revolution be released. A year later and progress is being made.
Those fighting for the declassification of official documents won a victory when the European Court of Human Rights judged in favour of declassifying the secret files relating to the protests last year.
The head of the association representing those involved in the revolution, Teodor Maries, is 60 days into a hunger strike. He’s taken a radical approach to achieve his ends and it seems to be paying dividends. Three weeks ago, 7,600 papers were released but Maries is still eager for the remaining files to be declassified.
“These documents belonged to the National Defence Ministry, the main force involved in putting down the big demonstrations in December 1989. We don’t know who made them secret, and who the person in Romania is that has been protected for 20 years,” he told Euranet.
In his fight for declassification, Maries and others are hoping to put the revolution back into the public eye. Yet, according to some this is a lost cause.
“In general, the subject of the revolution is no longer that interesting for Romanians, it’s more for those people who were involved back then,” said Sorin Pislaru, the Editor In Chief of the newspaper Ziarul Financiar.
The bloody coup that took place over twenty years ago did not fully succeed in purging the state of its former leaders. To this day, former communists and secret police officers are still key actors on the political stage.
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