An hour before December 27, Prime Minister Marcel Cholaku dismissed the State Secretary (State Secretariat for the Recognition of Merits of Fighters Against the Communist Regime) Mihai Julian Doda. Many of us received such a message immediately after signing the act, via SMS or WhatsApp: “We were fired, at night, like thieves.” The relatively young secretary of state, whose father died in the revolution, appointed by liberal Prime Minister Nicolae Chuke, rejected a request by the PSD-backed prime minister to claim his status as a “revolutionary of special merit”.

The victims of the revolution have the right to the truth and compensation

During the revolution, more than 1,100 people died and more than 3,000 were injured. These victims, respectively, the descendants of the dead, have the right in a human and legal sense to the truth (to know who shot them); they have the right to help; they are entitled, in a human and legal sense, to help from the Romanian state.

The truth about the killers was systematically concealed. The ECtHR is considering five cases initiated by victims of the revolution, in which European judges condemned the Romanian state for the lack of effective investigations, for the inaction of the authorities for long periods of time, for the numerous gaps that accompanied the investigation, for the deliberate concealment of evidence (here) .

Helping the wounded and maimed has a bad history. Fortunately, there was parallel international solidarity that compensated for what the Romanian authorities did not do. There was also the dedication of prominent doctors such as Nicolae Constantinescu (here).

I wonder what would be appropriate to say about compensation for permanent injuries?

The audacity of the title “martyr city”

During the revolution, about 100,000 people came out to meet the bullets in Timisoara. Almost the entire population of the city under the government took to the streets, knowing that real bullets were being fired and would be fired. If the name “martyr city” has any meaning, it refers to Timisoara. Or at most – also Bucharest, where tens of thousands of people who marched to the center of the capital on December 22, 1989, ensured, in the end, the fall of the Ceausescu regime. If this title were honorable, then it should not be given to other cities, nor to those where there were victims, and where the brave and meritorious were only a tiny minority.

However, today there are 24 martyr cities in Romania, which received this title on the grounds that their inhabitants distinguished themselves by self-sacrifice and heroism in the struggle that led to the victory of the December 1989 revolution. On December 30, 1994, the status of martyr cities and municipalities of Arad, Braila, Buzeu and Tirgovishte was granted by law “in honor of the displayed heroism and memory of the fallen martyrs”. In fact, the proof of “great casualties” was reduced to the existence of people killed, wounded or detained before the escape of the Ceausescus.

Look and cross yourself. I know the Buzeu case very well. What sacrifice? What kind of heroism? The only element that could be ticked to fraudulently obtain the title of “honest” was that I was picked up by a security team on the morning of December 22, taken to Bucharest and imprisoned in the basements of the 6th Security Directorate. So there is an arrestee!

In October 1989, I was sent under house arrest to Buzău. 42, from where I was escorted from home to work and back by a guard who stood side by side. All traffic in the area was reorganized, Democratic Street was the only light in the city, which plunged into darkness at night. The world knew what was happening and why it was happening. With the exception of two relatives who worked in the same Water Authority, there was no sign of solidarity with me for three months.[i]. On December 22, after my arrest, no one in the city rose up against the regime. Only after the departure of the helicopter from Ceaușescu did the residents of Buzău take to the streets. No one stopped them. No one shot at them. What sacrifice? What kind of heroism? What an injustice that my deportation to the city and my arrest on December 22, 1989 became the “circumstance” of the awarding of the title of martyr city to Buzău!

Disgusting defacement of revolutionary certificates

In 1992, Club 22 was created as an association of revolutionaries from Buzău, which later became the “Association of fighters who have special merits in the victory of the revolution of December 1989”. Talking about their “opposition experience”, even the members of the association admit that they did not go out until after the escape of the Ceausescu couple (here).

One day, when a little more order was needed in the debaucherous case of revolutionary ID cards, the Association asked me to give a statement about my arrest in December 1989. It was a fact. Could I not give? Shouldn’t I admit it? Later, they came back and asked to open a case to confirm my detention. Thus, he would obtain through the court what constituted a decision with the force of res judicata on the existence of those arrested in Buzeu – a condition for their recognition as revolutionaries. This time I refused. I consider it immoral to collect the blood and suffering of people. This fact compromises the uprising of those who really suffered repression.

After some time, it will turn out that the Buzoi revolutionaries did not even need their “smart” strategy. While working on the materials of the Revolution, prosecutors discovered 4 statements regarding my arrest in Buzău on the morning of December 22, 1989, given by security service employees in January-March 1990. The existence of the arrested person in the municipality was confirmed by documents from that moment. Of course, not the “sacrifice” and “heroism” of the residents.

Thus, 52 revolutionaries from Buzeau are sitting on the back of one man, deported and arrested on the morning of December 22, 1989, and receive their revolutionaries every month. In front of the whole nation, in broad daylight (and not at night, as trumpeter Marcel Čolaku sometimes signs), they declare that they have proven special merits in the victory of the revolution in December 1989.

Corruption in the name of the December revolution of 1989

The policy of martyr cities, the system of revolutionary certificates, the Institute of the Revolution of December 1989 are forms of elaborate, politically supported corruption involving networks of people and institutions. Associations of decision-makers and beneficiaries have the nature of criminal groups that steal public funds, covered by the abuse of the law, possibly by abuse of power – Read the rest of the article at Contributors.ro