Wikipedia 16 May 2008

Did you know...
    ... that the second major land reform in Romania took place in 1921, following a
    promise made by King Ferdinand to the troops during World War I?

Romanian deputies approved on Tuesday a draft law which bans fast food products to be sold in schools. Thus, all products with a supplementary fat content, sweeteners and food additives will be forbidden. The law was initiated by parliamentarians from all political parties and was adopted with 183 votes in favor and three abstentions.

The main argument behind the proposal was to prevent children from obesity, diabetes and other disease caused by fast food products. The initiative rules out all food products that contain supplementary fat content, sweeteners and food additives.

According to the bill, menus served in schools will be approved by nutrition specialists authorized by the Health Ministry. Thus, they will set up a list with allowed food products which will be distributed in schools across the country.

May 9th has a three-fold significance for Romanians. In chronological order, May 9th 1877 is the day when Romania declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire. Then, May 9th 1945 was the end of World War 2, in which hundreds of thousands of Romanian soldiers died in the line of duty. But the most recent celebration is Europe Day, which gained special importance after January 1st, 2007, when Romania joined the European Union. Europe Day was chosen by the EU leaders in Milan in 1985. Along with the Euro currency and the anthem, 9th of May is one of the symbols of the European Union.

We should note that the EU was established in a post-war European context marked by the beginning of the Cold War. The key issue facing the continent in the 1950s was how to avoid the errors of the past and pave the way for long-term peace between nations that had long been in conflict. This is how the European project was born, with Jean Monnet and Robert Schumann as its architects. The idea of a European Union based on a community of peaceful interests was therefore the foundation for the cooperation of old-time enemies (France, England, Germany) which put the bitterness of the war and the burden of the past behind them. The novelty of bringing individuals and nations together through a shared objective prompted an entirely new process in international relations: the joint exercise of sovereignty in a number of fields.

Europe thus became the continent which established the world's first economic region – a project that has developed over time. While in the beginning the key objective of the EU was peaceful cooperation, today it pursues a different goal: to build a Europe which respects the freedom and identity of its nations. As part of the 27-member family, Romania plays an active role in upholding the institutional development laid down in the new European constitution, an idea also emphasised by President of Romania Traian Basescu at the May 9th reception in Bucharest:

“The Union is a work in progress, there is still a lot to discover and a lot to do. You have an opportunity to contribute to the growth and development of this project.”

Europe Day is celebrated in Romania with military, religious and cultural events. One of these is EuropaFest, which this year brings together 300 musicians from Europe and other continents to Bucharest. Abroad, 48 Romanian diplomatic missions host cultural and public diplomacy events occasioned by Europe Day.

Wikipedia: Europe Day

As a synthetic space between the West and the East, Romania has laid this specific mark also on the significance of the 1st of May. First, for the Romanians, May 1st was an ancient spring ritual. The cosmic Christianity, specific for the rural populations from Eastern Europe, associated the significance of the defeat of the evil, of sin with the beginning of the month of flowers (May is also called “Florar” from “flower” in Romanian). Therefore, on May 1st, the Romanians, together with relatives and friends went out for a picnic in order to benefit from the renaissance of the substance.

It is precisely the persistence of this folk ritual which explains the fact that the first socio-political celebration of the day of Mai 1st took place in Romania on 1890.

Thus, only one year after the Congress of the Socialist International decreed in 1889 the day of May 1st as the International Day of Labour, in the memory of the victims of the general strike from Chicago from 1886, but also to honour the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators who protested at that time on the whole territory of Romania for the right to the working day of eight hours, without having their salary cut.

The folk ritual recalled above is associated also with another favouring factor for the consecration of May 1st as a celebration. This time, it is a factor of social psychology. Exactly because of their vocation for synthesis, the Romanians have always nourished a special sort of nostalgia of the West. Their generalized belief, that “we come from Ram (Rome – editor’s note),” marked by their generic name of Romanians (the Latin romanus > Romanian), has rendered them sensitive to the western influences, with all the virtues and servitudes of this state of mind, visible also today.

This local state of mind has varied also subject to the cultural condition, and then to the political one of the factors of action from Romania. Therefore, the beginnings of the socialist movement from Romania were under the influence of some intellectual circles, which have focused on the general study of the Romanian society and on the humanitarian calls, to respect the human rights. The “Human rights” was also the title of a Romanian magazine which appeared by the end of the 19th century, the end of a century which finally marks the shift from the general-human request to the claim through social protest, concurrently with the creation in 1893 of the Social-Democrat Party of the Workers from Romania. The day of May 1st becomes in this way also a symbol of the class straggle from Romania, with its virtues and servitudes.

It is the multiplicity of these contradictory aspects which explains the fact that other political formations from the interwar Romania, apart from the socialist, social-democrat and communist ones, begin to relate themselves to the significance of the day of May 1st which became the International Labour Day. Initially, the fact itself had a positive meaning, as the premise of a more extensive national solidarity going beyond the limits of the class struggle. Unfortunately, in that stage, Romania was marked by outstanding contradictions which have permanently deepened, especially because of the outdated agrarian estates and the trans-national monopolies whose actions contradicted significantly the Liberal slogan of the “development through ourselves,” definitely necessary for Romania, reunited on December 1, 1918. Moreover, the rupture, especially cultural, between the urban and rural environments, continued to confer to May 1st also other contradictory significances. Thus, after WW II, in Romania like in the other countries of the socialist-communist block, the workers movements received a radical anti- capitalist meaning.

May 1st becomes in this way a state celebration, with vast military parades, with workers, peasants, sports, pioneers (the children between the ages of 9 and 14 - the author’s note) festive demonstrations. The old vindicative character is converted into a propagandistic one with an equally contradictory content. On the occasion of the events organized on May 1st, the imperialist capitalism, in search of new wars, was accused on the one hand, while on another hand vast projects of national development were launched. The day of May 1st became in this way the symbol of the contradiction between negative and positive, between programmatic and artificial. All these have turned the day of May 1st from an ideal into contradictory and anachronic reality.

This explains the fact that after the fall of communism the day of May 1st was nostalgically invoked and evoked, and at the same time accused and challenged in a reversal of the class struggle. As a natural reaction to this political hotchpotch, the significance of May 1st returns to its ancestral data, of an increasingly obvious folk ritual. Go out in groups to the fields, for a barbecue with the traditional sausage shaped minced meat and the bottles of beer and wine, for the reconciled celebration with all those that you meet.

Wherefrom it is obvious that history obeys a destiny as a reflex of the cosmic balance.

Wikipedia: May Day

(Monica Lovinescu, a Paris-based literary critic and journalist who encouraged intellectual resistance to Romania's communist regime from the microphone of Radio Free Europe from 1964-92, passed away on April 21 at the age of 85.

The daughter of influential interwar academic Eugen Lovinescu, and a mother who was to die in a communist prison, Monica Lovinescu enjoyed tremendous prestige and influence in her native Romania. She was considered a chief ideologue in arguing that communist crimes were equal to those of the Nazis, and her work angered dictator Nicolae Ceausescu to the point that he ordered the beating in 1977 that left her in a coma. She recovered to return to her seat behind the microphone, where she observed the downfall of Ceausescu's regime in 1989.)

Monica Lovinescu matters because she was one of the most important voices of the Eastern and Central European antitotalitarian thought. Her passing away is a major loss for all the friends of an open society. My personal indebtedness to her—like that of many Romanian intellectuals—is immense. As a member of the Presidential Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania (which I chaired), Lovinescu participated, even during the most painful moments of physical suffering, in the condemnation of communist totalitarianism. Her solidarity was unswerving, both morally and intellectually.

Lovinescu's crucial impact on Romania's culture is inextricably linked to her major role as a cultural commentator for Radio Free Europe (RFE). There is no exaggeration in saying that no other RFE broadcast was more execrated, abhorred, and feared by Ceausescu and the communist nomenklatura than those undertaken by Lovinescu and her husband, Virgil Ierunca.

For decades, Lovinescu fought against terrorist collectivisms, the regimentation of the mind, and moral capitulation. Her patriotism was enlightened and generous. Thanks to her, Romanian intellectuals were able to internalize the great messages from the writings of Camus, Arendt, Kolakowski, Orwell, Solzhenitsyn, Koestler, Cioran, Milosz, Revel, Aron, and the list is fatally too short. A spirit totally dedicated to modernity, open to the crucial polemics of the 20th century, Lovinescu wrote poignant essays on the what American critic Lionel Trilling called "the bloody crossroads, where literature and politics meet."

For years, her outspoken positions in defense of dissident writers and moral resistance to totalitarianism provoked the ire of the party hacks and their Securitate associates. Starting in 1967 and continuing today, publications associated with the most vicious, ultranationalist, and anti-Semitic circles among Romania's Stalinists have targeted Monica Lovinescu. On several occasions, in the 1970s-80s, attempts were made on her life.

For Ceausescu and his sycophants (many of whom are still thriving in the Social Democratic and Romania Mare parties), Lovinescu symbolizes all they love to hate: pluralism, tolerance, hostility to xenophobia, compassion for victims of both totalitarianisms (fascist and communist), and a commitment to what we can call an "ethics of forgetlessness." On the other hand, democratic intellectuals (Gabriel Liiceanu, Andrei Plesu, N. Manolescu, H.R. Patapievici, Andrei Cornea, Dorin Tudoran, Cristian Teodorescu, Sorin Alexandrescu, Mircea Mihaies, Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, to name just a few) learned from her that "memory is indispensable to freedom."

Lovinescu matters because she knew how to maintain the unity between ethics and aesthetics. In 1963, she wrote: "We live in an age in which impostures abound. They should not conceal however the other voices—those of the victims." Her RFE broadcasts were precisely an antidote to the official mendacity, a voice of truth speaking for those condemned to silence.

Especially during the watershed year 1968, Lovinescu paid close attention to the ideological crisis of world communism and the importance of disenchantment among ex-Marxist intellectuals. At a historical juncture when Ceausescu masqueraded as a de-Stalinizer, Lovinescu exposed the tyrant's imposture and appealed to Romanian writers to emulate the ethical audacity of Czech and Slovak intellectuals such as Ludvik Vaculik, Vaclav Havel, Ivan Svitak, Ladislav Mnacko, Eduard Goldstuecker, Antonin Liehm, Pavel Kohout, and Ivan Klima. Thanks to Radio Free Europe and to Monica Lovinescu, Romanians had direct access to the iconoclastic pages of "Literarny listy."

At a time when many thought disparagingly about anything smacking of neo-Marxism, Lovinescu and her husband Ierunca highlighted the significance of revisionism for the destruction of communist pseudo-legitimacy. She wrote extensively about the importance of apostasy, which she described as the "voie royale" toward the awakening from what Immanuel Kant coined "the dogmatic sleep." Furthermore, while emphasizing the need for Romanian culture to avoid autarky, she proposed remarkable guidelines that decisively influenced the intellectual cannon in the country.

Lovinescu's writings have come out after 1990 from the prestigious publishing house Humanitas. A few weeks before her passing away, I reread her essays from 1968. They strike me as extraordinarily timely, insightful, and prescient. She understood before many others that communism was irretrievably sick, and she insisted on the role of intellectuals in the insurrectionary saga of Eastern Europe's opposition to Sovietism.

After 1990, Lovinescu and Ierunca saw many of their predictions (including the dire ones) come true. The legacies of national-Stalinism continue to haunt Romania's fragile pluralism. The lackeys of the ancien regime made it politically and financially. Dissidents were exhausted, marginalized, slandered.

Things changed, however, after 1996 and especially after 2004. The initiation by Traian Basescu of the Presidential Commission unleashed a national conversation along the lines of historical truth and moral justice. Immediately after President Basescu's condemnation of the communist regime as illegitimate and criminal, on December 18, 2006, I called from Bucharest and told Monica Lovinescu what happened. I mentioned the hysterical sabotaging of the president's speech by Romania Mare leader, and former Ceausescu bootlicker, Corneliu Vadim Tudor. Her answer was short and encapsulated the meaning of an exemplary intellectual and moral itinerary: "The noise doesn't matter. Truth was said. We won!"

Vladimir Tismaneanu is professor of politics at the University of Maryland, chair of the Presidential Advisory Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania, and author of numerous books including "Stalinism For All Seasons: A Political History Of Romanian Communism" [University of California Press]. Since 1983, he has been a regular contributor to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Wikipedia: Monica Lovinescu
Wikipedia: Radio Free Europe
Wikipedia: Vladimir Tismăneanu

Beware the Road of Good Intentions

The plot of “Stuff and Dough” is, at least at first glance, as plain and straightforward as the movie’s title. A young man named Ovidiu (Alexandru Papadopol) is hired by a smooth, shady businessman to drive a mysterious package—that would be the stuff—from the Romanian coastal city of Constanta to the capital, Bucharest. The dough he’ll earn for performing this simple task will help his parents, who run an informal convenience store out of their apartment, move their business into a proper kiosk. Ovidiu has his best buddy, Vali (Dragos Bucur), for company. What could go wrong?

A few things will, of course: a late start; the unexpected presence of Vali’s girlfriend, Bety (Ioana Flora); and, once they’re on the highway, a red vehicle in threatening pursuit. The director, Cristi Puiu, who wrote the screenplay with Razvan Radulescu, almost casually assembles the elements of a stripped-down highway thriller, a throwback to American gear-grinders of the 1960s and ’70s like “Two-Lane Blacktop” or “The Duel.”

But though it is suspenseful, unnerving and agile in its techniques, “Stuff and Dough” has more than speed and danger on its mind. Mr. Puiu’s second feature, “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu,” winner of the Prix un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2005, introduced many European and American critics to a new kind of tough, socially critical realist cinema blossoming in Romania. “Stuff and Dough,” a 2002 film belatedly crossing the ocean in the wake of “Lazarescu,” is more modest in scope but no less impressive in its self-confidence, its candor and its stringent, undogmatic contemporary relevance.

Mr. Puiu is not inclined to state themes or draw out lessons. He is, instead, a relentless observer of the smallest, most banal details of human behavior. By keeping his camera in the car with Bety, Vali and Ovidiu, he draws nuances of character out of their boredom and impatience. He also sticks to Ovidiu’s perspective, never giving the audience more information about what is going on than the young man himself possesses. The result is that we share in his innocence even as we become aware of his carelessness, and also of the perils inherent in his mixture of sloppiness and naïveté.

Like Dante Lazarescu, the unsympathetic old drunk whose passing became a fable of routine inhumanity and unexpected compassion, Ovidiu is, in spite of himself, something of a representative figure, a nice kid forced to navigate between corruption and victimhood. The title of “Stuff and Dough” offers a blunt summary of human aspirations in an economy where free enterprise can be hard to distinguish from crime. At the start Ovidiu feels lucky, free and in control of his future. He’ll help his parents, impress a powerful local citizen and spend a day out on the highway with his friends. Really, though, he has wandered into a trap that closes around him gradually and quietly.

The brilliance of “Stuff and Dough” is that it wraps this powerful, disturbing drama in an anecdote from ordinary life. As is often the case in recent Romanian movies, the acting is so accomplished as to be invisible. There is no showy emotion, no elaborate expressions of interior states. We just see people responding to circumstances that grow increasingly tense and confusing. Only afterward do we marvel at the complication of the story and the clarity with which it has been told.

STUFF AND DOUGH

Opens on Wednesday in Manhattan.

Directed by Cristi Puiu; written (in Romanian, with English subtitles) by Mr. Puiu and Razvan Radulescu; director of photography, Silviu Stavila; music by Andreea Paduraru; produced by Cornel Carjan; released by Mitropoulos Films. At Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of Avenue of the Americas, South Village. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. This film is not rated.

WITH: Alexandru Papadopol (Ovidiu), Dragos Bucur (Vali), Ioana Flora (Bety), Luminita Gheorghiu (the Mother), Razvan Vasilescu (Marcel Ivanov) and Doru Ana (Doncea).

MORE ABOUT THIS MOVIE

Overview
Tickets & Showtimes
New York Times Review
Cast, Credits & Awards
Reader's Revierws

Wikipedia: Cristi Puiu

Wikipedia 23 April 2008

Did you know...
    ...that, although he wrote most of his work in Romanian, Romanian poet Panait Cerna is
    thought to have had a better grasp of his native Bulgarian?

The well-known literary critic was, during the communist regime, one of the most prominent voices to be heard on Radio free Europe against dictatorship.

Romanian culture is in mourning again. Literary critic Monica Lovinescu died at the Charles Richet Hospital of Val d’Oise, 15 km from Paris, at the age of 85, at 00h30 on Sunday night. The death of Monica Lovinescu brings back to memory not only the famous ‘Theses and Antitheses’ that were being born by Radio Free Europe’s waves to a Romania that was longing for its freedom, but also her art of writing best described as a plea for truth.

Monica Lovinescu was a journalist, literary critic and acclaimed radio commentator. She was the daughter of critic Eugen Lovinescu. Monica Lovinescu was born on the 19th of November 1923. She started her elementary education in private and was afterwards enrolled to the Notre Dame de Sion secondary school where she took her baccalaureate as well, in 1942. She studied at the Bucharest University Faculty of Letters from where she obtained her degree in 1946. In 1947, she left to Paris on a scholarship offered by the French Government. In the first days of 1948, she sought political asylum to France. She began by participating in various youth literary circles and by directing avant-garde plays. Then, the situation in the country captured her entire attention. On the 18th of November 1977, Monica Lovinescu was assaulted by Palestinian hit men hired by the former Securitate, by Nicolae Ceausescu’s order, and she was taken to hospital in critical condition. Having recovered, she resumed the work she understood to be her true mission with equilibrium and in full awareness. Monica Lovinescu’s husband, Virgil Ierunca, who died in Paris, in September 2006, was one of the outstanding Romanian intellectuals in exile, one of the most familiar voices of Radio Free Europe under communism.

The two protagonists of the Romanian opposition critique established to Paris, for several decades, operated an unquestionable forging influence on the spirit of the Romanian intellectual community in point of education, taste, judgement and attitudes that massively counterbalanced the official propaganda and contributed to the dissipation of the various faces of horror. The Minister of Culture and Religious Affairs, Adrian Iorgulescu, is of the opinion that Monica Lovinescu’s ‘unmistakable’ voice on the wave-lengths of Radio Free Europe was the synonym of hope for ‘the prisoners of the Ceausescu regime’.

‘During the Great and Holy Week we have been given this painful piece of news that Mrs. Monica Lovinescu has passed away. For half a century, Monica Lovinescu’s unmistakable voice, brought by the wave lengths of Radio Free Europe to our homes was to us, the prisoners of the Ceausescu regime, the synonym of hope. It was from Monica Lovinescu that we have learnt the most important lesson of human dignity. The , a term she patented, was the cornerstone of an axiological system running in parallel with the official one based on which the only authentic canon of the Romanian literature that was written in the communist period was built’ Adrian Iorgulescu stated. President Traian Basescu also regretted the death of Monica Lovinescu in a communiqué released by Cotroceni Palace.

Wikipedia: Monica Lovinescu

TIRASPOL, Moldova (Reuters) - When the president of Moldova sat down with the leader of the separatist Transdniestria region, many hoped for a breakthrough in one of the former Soviet Union's seemingly endless "frozen conflicts."

The March 11 meeting was, after all, their first since 2001.

Both sides say the talks went well in a town on the edge of Transdniestria, a sliver of land abutting Ukraine.

Reality has since taken hold in Moldova, Europe's poorest country according to statistics. Entrenched positions 16 years after Russian troops ended a war suggest progress will be slow.

Some things have, however, clearly changed.

Moldova has improved poor relations with Moscow—which has long backed the separatists. And Russia appears to be pressing for a solution—officials say it was a call from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that kickstarted the talks.

Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin, the only Communist leader in an ex-Soviet state, offers "the broadest possible autonomy" to Russian-speaking Transdniestria—which enjoys no international recognition.

Igor Smirnov, self-styled president of Transdniestria, says he will settle only for independence. Other officials say Moldova should become a federation to put the region on a footing like Canada's province of Quebec or Spain's Catalonia.

"If Moldova were like Switzerland, we would join it tomorrow as a canton. But we have next to us a communist regime which does not want change," Valery Litskay, Trasndniestria's flamboyant "foreign minister," said in his wood-paneled office.

"Having the broadest possible autonomy is akin to being the world's biggest frog, which cannot be equal to an elephant. Even a one-tonne frog is still no elephant."

Moldovan Reintegration Minister Vasilii Sova, Litskay's more staid counterpart in talks, sounds more hopeful in public.

"Whatever you may feel, there is reality," he said. "We believe that building on the achievements of the past two years will produce a rapprochement and allow for a settlement."

Reporters grasping at any suggestion of progress saw Litskay chatting with Sova during a stroll in a Chisinau park last week. Officials said a meeting of a group of officials also went well.

WAR, REFERENDUMS

Transdniestria's Slavs declared independence in 1990 in Soviet times on fears that majority Romanian-speakers might make Moldova part of Romania, as it was before World War Two.

That never happened. But since the war, Transdniestria has acted as an independent state, with 1,200 Russian troops staying to uphold the peace and guard 20,000 tonnes of munitions.

Referendums have produced votes over 90 percent in favor of independence and, however improbably, joining faraway Russia one day. The West rejects the votes as irrelevant and undemocratic.

The dispute—in the heart of central Europe—has proven as intractable as post-Soviet "frozen conflicts" between Georgia and Russian-backed separatists in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

But a Western diplomat said Russia had altered its tactics in Transdniestria for strategic reasons. A diplomatic success in Moldova, with participants urged on by Russia, would contrast sharply with an impasse in attempts at a settlement in Serbia's Kosovo province, whose independence was underpinned by the West.

Tiraspol, Transdniestria's regional "capital," sports crumbling Soviet-era apartment buildings, dotted with small shops, the odd modern restaurant or bank and a lively market.

Poverty and disillusion are widespread. Young people clamor for passports issued by relatively affluent Russia or Ukraine and many dream of heading off for better pay and prospects.

Denis Lukin, 23, earns the equivalent each month of $150 in a shop - rent takes up 80 percent and the rest is spent on food.

"It is unrealistic to consider any sort of life here," Lukin, 23, said in the main square by a statue of Alexander Suvorov, Russia's military genius who founded Tiraspol in 1792.

"The only thing to do is go far, far away."

Crossing the border into Transdniestria requires patience, with nervous officials consulting security bodies for clearance.

Making a telephone call to the region from Chisinau is all but impossible. Freight trains have long stopped running.

Mediation by the 56-nation Organisation For Security and Cooperation, along with Russia, Ukraine, the European Union and the United States, has made little progress over the years.

Moldova rejected a Russian plan to create a federation in 2003 at the last minute and relations soured—until recent months—as it accused the Kremlin of abetting the separatists.

Separatist leaders say they have no notion who will take power when Voronin steps down next year after two terms.

They say Russia remains solid in backing their cause, contributing to the budget and offering monthly bonuses to pensioners otherwise receiving less than $100.

Breaching differences may prove difficult despite changes.

"We have witnessed destruction for five years. We haven't stood still like two bottles of beer in a fridge," Litskay said.

"We've grown apart. Our economy, communications, transport, education, culture. And the process is continuing. Attempts to bring us together will be more difficult than in 2003."

(Additional reporting by Dmitry Chubashenko; Editing by Charles Dick)

Wikipedia: Moldova
Wikipedia: Transdniestria

The hills near the village of Jucu, where Nokia built its new production facility, are the scene of the roughest real estate war in the area of Cluj. Hundreds of hectares of land were bought for almost nothing and are now estimated at 100 euro per square meter. Investors design huge residential areas in the expanding industrial zone. The entire county dreams of asphalt belts, detouring freeways and urban highways. But a butterfly, a simple butterfly, sheds another kind of light over the industrial, financial and political interests in the area.

Professor Laszlo Rakosy returned to Romania after a long program designed to save a species of endangered blue butterflies in Austria. Similar insects were found near Cluj, on the hills of Apahida, Jucu and Bontida. The professor dreams of opening a natural reservation, protected by the EU law.

The butterflies are not the only rare species in the area. A groundhog was found at Apahida and several rare plants were also identified near Jucu.

Wikipedia: Butterfly Effect

Wikipedia 14 April 2008

Did you know...
    ...that the Pentecostal Union of Romania has experienced rapid growth in recent years
    due to conversions and high birthrates, with some families having up to 18 children?

Wikipedia 12 April 2008

Did you know...
    ...that in 1989, the Popular Front of Moldova was initially backed by a range of ethnic
    groups, but quickly lost support from Russian speakers and Gagauz?

SFANTU GHEORGHE, Romania — Dozens of wreaths trailing ribbons in red, white and green, the colors of the Hungarian flag, covered the base of a memorial to the 1848 revolution in the town park here on a recent day. Deep in the heart of Romania, just one lonely garland bears the country’s own blue, yellow and red banner.

New Year’s is celebrated twice here, first at the stroke of midnight and then an hour later, when it is midnight in Budapest. When Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in February, hundreds of the town’s Hungarians took to the main square to demonstrate in favor of Kosovo, and by extension their own aspirations for autonomy.

A Hungarian minority group is pressing for greater autonomy in a region where its members outnumber Romanians. A new and more radical organization, the Hungarian Civic Party, has risen to challenge the establishment Hungarian party, which has been a member of each coalition government since 1996.

Those who argue that independence for Kosovo has set a bad precedent tend to talk about frozen conflicts outside the European Union — Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in Georgia, and Transnistria in Moldova. But even in the European Union, borders are often arbitrary. Many ethnic minorities, like the Basques and the Roma, remain stateless while others, like the Hungarians in Romania, as well as in Slovakia and Serbia, are still separated from their brethren.

The Hungarian minority here, known as Szeklers, certainly believe their time for independence has arrived and that their proposed semi-autonomous state, Szeklerland, is an impending reality.

“Kosovo is an example, and a very clear one, that if the community wants to live under self-government, we have to declare very loudly our will,” said Csaba Ferencz, vice president of the Szekler National Council, a local Hungarian group founded in 2003 with autonomy as its stated goal. Szeklers are a distinct ethnic group from the Magyars, Hungary’s dominant population.

Their chances of success appear slim, but they are pressing ahead to the chagrin of Romanians here, who say that as a local minority they have fewer rights than Hungarians do as a nationwide minority.

The Hungarian region, comprising part of Mures County and all of Harghita and Covasna, where Sfantu Gheorghe is the capital, was once a border area of the Hungarian kingdom defended by the Szeklers. After World War I, the Szeklers found themselves smack in the middle of Romania, a few hours drive north through the Carpathian Mountains from Bucharest.

The conclusion of the war is best remembered for the harsh terms imposed on Germany. But the peace agreement signed by Hungary in 1920, the Treaty of Trianon, was arguably even tougher. Hungary lost roughly two-thirds of its territory and population, including one-third of its Hungarian speakers, in the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a loss that to this day is known as the Trianon trauma. (Hungary regained most of its lost territories temporarily during World War II.)

Nowhere is the Hungarian minority larger or more vocal in its demands for greater independence than in Romania. Hungarians make up 1.5 million of Romania’s 22 million people, about half of them Szeklers. Little wonder that Romania, a member of the European Union and the host of the just-completed NATO summit meeting, joined Slovakia, Serbia and Russia in refusing to recognize Kosovo.

Unlike the Kosovars, the Szeklers are asking for autonomy within Romania rather than complete independence, leaving foreign policy and national defense in the hands of the government in Bucharest. Szeklerland would be nearly 4,000 square miles, with just over 800,000 people, three-quarters of them Hungarian.

The headquarters of the Szekler National Council sits in a large tan stucco house, a short walk from the center of town. Out front hang both the European Union flag and that of the Szeklers, a blue field with a horizontal gold stripe across the middle and a gold sun and silver star on either side. The house was previously the home of a lawyer dedicated to the cause of Hungarian self-rule.

The council shares its headquarters with the newly minted Hungarian Civic Party, which was approved in March to take part in elections, as an alternative to the mainstream Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania. The Democratic Union stands accused, by Romanians in particular, of old-fashioned ethnic machine politics. But their Civic Party opponents accuse them of selling out.

“Since 1996 they are in the government and we think once they were, they represented the interests of the Romanian majority and not the Hungarian minority,” said Zoltan Gazda, president of the Sfantu Gheorghe branch of the new party.

“We have always respected the Romanian laws in our fight for autonomy, but if this does not have a good ending it may raise up other kinds of tensions,” Mr. Gazda said. “We have signals that the discontent can increase with conflicts.”

Municipal elections on June 1 will be a test of strength between the two Hungarian parties before parliamentary elections later in the year. They are likely to work out an arrangement to ensure that they do not split the vote in the national race.

Under Communism, the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu tried to dilute the Hungarian populations by moving Romanians into areas where they were concentrated, particularly along the border with Hungary.

Romanians there complain that Hungarian memorials, like the one above, are flourishing.

Romanians here say the government in Bucharest has subordinated their interests in exchange for Hungarian parliamentary votes. For example, said Rodica Parvan, a Romanian member of the town council, the national government does nothing while subsidies to churches and schools, which are largely segregated, are distributed unequally by the Hungarian-dominated local government.

However, most of the complaints by the Romanian residents are over symbolic snubs, such as the council meetings held only in Hungarian and Hungarian-language carols played at Christmastime. On March 15, the Hungarian national holiday marking the beginning of the 1848 revolution against Hapsburg rule, Ms. Parvan was dismayed to see the Romanian flag in front of the county government seat hanging at half-mast.

“They told me the wind blew it down,” she said.

Wikipedia 6 April 2008

In the news...
    At its summit in Bucharest, NATO invites Albania and Croatia to join the alliance.

Did you know...
    ...that the postmodernist Romanian writer Ruxandra Cesereanu retold Arthurian legends
    and co-authored poems through e-mail with the American Andrei Codrescu?

BUCHAREST (Reuters) - When NATO leaders meet in Bucharest on Wednesday, they will be granted an inside glimpse of the megalomaniac dreams of Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania's communist-era dictator.

The Alliance's April 2-4 summit will be held in the giant Parliament Palace, built in the 1980s on the orders of Ceausescu to reflect his power and his vision of a mighty state.

Romanian guidebooks tout the building as the world's second largest after the Pentagon. Architects lament the demolition of Bucharest's historic centre, with its churches, synagogues and unique Modernist villas, to make room for construction.

The building is in some ways a monument to the scars inflicted on Romania by the late Ceausescu's brutal policies.

At the time of construction, its ostentatious excess contrasted with the harsh living conditions endured by ordinary Romanians, whose food was rationed to near starvation levels and whose heating came on for a few hours a day, if at all.

Almost 20 years after Ceausescu's execution in 1989 during a bloody revolution against his regime, authorities are still struggling to modernize the dilapidated city, get its chaotic traffic moving and ease the poverty of many inhabitants.

"The palace is a very good illustration of the totalitarian way of seeing the relationship between people and their leaders," said Mariana Celac, an architect and Ceausescu-era dissident.

"It has walls, boundaries, locked gates and huge distances to be walked through, presumably with humility."

Ceausescu, who initially named the building "House of the People," was once quoted as saying the Palace would become Romania's "Acropolis."

"I need something grand, something very grand, that reflects what we have already achieved," he is reported to have said.

KITSCH AND SECURITY

Thousands of tonnes of crystal, marble and wood were hauled to Bucharest from across Romania for the construction of the Palace, with its sprawling corridors and glitzy halls, as well as secret tunnels and a nuclear bunker.

The security features, a testimony to Ceausescu's fears of attack, might still be useful during the April NATO meeting if the Alliance's leaders were to come under threat, said its designer and chief architect, Anca Petrescu.

"The building is prepared for a high degree of security," she said.

Ceausescu and his feared wife Elena regularly inspected the construction site. Some 40,000 residents were evicted to make way for the palace, and many were housed in the drab apartment blocs that now make up large swathes of Bucharest, rusting and crumbling only a couple of decades after being built.

Petrescu said six people died in accidents during the construction of the 3,000-room building, which now contains both of Romania's chambers of parliament, an art museum and a vast conference venue.

The Palace's eclectic facade is replete with soaring marble columns. Together with matching tower blocs nearby—inspired by North Korean architecture—it looms over Bucharest.

"During construction, the entire (national) production of stone was reserved. Marble was banned for private use," said Celac.

Bucharest was once a quietly elegant capital, with tree-lined boulevards and discreet villas designed by progressive Modernist architects in the 1920s and 30s.

At the start of World War Two it was considered one of Europe's most advanced in terms of urban planning.

But after Ceausescu's demolitions, two earthquakes and free-for-all construction that marred Romania's sluggish transition from communism to democracy, the city is struggling to regain its style.

This leaves Ceausescu's palace as its biggest tourist attraction. Despite being widely considered a monstrosity, its sheer size means it isn't going away soon—and it does have its uses.

Romanian President Traian Basescu, asked by Reuters what he thought of the building, was diplomatic.

"In my mind this building is relevant for a single reason. It is the second largest building in the world after the Pentagon. Period," he joked.

(Additional reporting by Iulia Rosca and Luiza Ilie; reporting by Justyna Pawlak; editing by Andrew Roche)

see The House of the People

BUCHAREST (Reuters) - From sealing off streets and lining up snipers to catching stray dogs, Romania has beefed up security in the capital Bucharest for next week's NATO summit of world leaders.

The April 2-4 gathering is Romania's highest profile event ever. Hotels have been booked for the 3,000 delegates, including U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as some 3,500 journalists.

Squads of workers gave the usually grimy city a frantic facelift—planting flower beds, hanging new street signs and painting some downtown facades.

But the real focus of the event's organizers has been ensuring the security of Romania's important guests, and that has been realized on a massive scale.

Fighter jets and warships are on standby in Romania and neighboring Bulgaria, both NATO's newest members. Authorities have brought in chemical and biological warfare experts, divers and thousands of additional personnel.

Police officers have already begun patrolling Bucharest's main arteries, many of them already cleared of parked cars and the city's usually log jammed traffic.

Some sectors of Bucharest plan to prohibit the sale of alcohol during the summit. Trash cans have been dismantled and sewers sealed along official summit routes.

More controversially, workers have picked up scores of stray dogs, a legacy of communist-era housing policies when thousands of people were evicted from their villas in the 1980s and housed in drab apartment blocs.

Many household dogs were left on the streets in the process.

TAXING RESTRICTIONS

The gathering will be held in Bucharest's landmark Parliament Palace, the gargantuan product of megalomaniac dreams of communist-era dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, which now serves as the city's main tourist attraction.

On the summit's agenda are the alliance's tensions over its mission in Afghanistan and a potential deployment of additional troops there. Heads of NATO's 26 member states may also agree on further enlargement to include Croatia, Macedonia and Albania.

For the capital's 2 million inhabitants, the summit is already taxing as restrictions have concentrated traffic in Bucharest's outer areas.

"It takes forever to get to the centre. ... We won't have any peace until this is over," said Florica Gheorghe, a 77-year-old pensioner.

With more than 9,000 inhabitants per square kilometer, Bucharest is one of Europe's most crowded and polluted cities. Nearly 1 million cars are trapped daily in sooty traffic along main boulevards, most lined with decaying buildings.

Officials hope the summit will catch the eyes of foreign tourists and boost the city's popularity.

"If we were able to organize the world's youth festival in 1950s I don't see any reason why we could not organize a NATO summit these days," President Traian Basescu told foreign journalists earlier this week.

(Reporting by Luiza Ilie; Editing by Mary Gabriel)

Romania will attend for the first time the “London Book Fair” during April 14 – 16, in a stand organized by the Romanian Cultural Institute (ICR) the public relations department of the institution announced.

ICR mentioned that 25 Romanian publishing houses present over 650 books and albums, as well as 650 audio books in the 108 square metre stand offered to Romania. The slogan of the stand organized by ICR at the “London Book Fair 2008” is “Writers from a Country Hard to Write: Romania.”

At the Romanian stand, publishers will be granted locations for meeting potential partners or foreign collaborators.

On April 15, there will be a discussion on contemporary literature and the Romanian book market, meant to synthesize the Romanian presence at “London Book Fair”, and a section of the fair will be dedicated to the project of supporting translations, developed by the National Book Centre, an institution founded within ICR in 2007.

According to ICR, most of the publishers agreed to offer copies of the books they presented to the libraries of Romanian Cultural Institute subsidiaries located abroad, after the closing of the “London Book Fair 2008.”

Targeted on publishers, distributors, book sellers and professionals in publishing all over the world, the Book Fair hosted by Earl Court from London is the most important British event in this field and one of the most significant global events related to publishing. The 2007 edition had attracted over 230,000 attendants from 109 countries. Details on “London Book Fair” may be found on the website of the event: http://www.londonbookfair.com.

The first-time Romanian attendance to “London Book Fair” is part of a program of intense promotion to Romanian literature abroad. By the programs “TPS – Translation and Publication Support” and “Twenty Authors”, ICR supported the publishing of over 30 volumes in more than ten European countries, as well as in Israel and the United States.

Moreover, 25 financing requests submitted by foreign publishers were selected by the TPS jury at the end of 2007 and will be granted financing in the forthcoming period. (Further details may be found on the website http://www.icr.ro ).

Preparations for next month's Nato summit in Romania are being overshadowed by a row - over toilets.

Parliamentary official Mihai Unghianu says Nato has complained that there are not enough lavatories at the venue.

Nato is said to have asked the government to install 1,000 temporary toilets - one for every five delegates, each costing $9,500 (£4,700) a week.

Nato has not publicly commented on the issue. Key talks on its Afghanistan mission are expected at the summit.

It will take place at the vast parliamentary palace in Bucharest, built for the late dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, but now the site for both houses of parliament.

The palace is among the largest buildings in the world, and although it has more than 1,000 halls and rooms, and 4,500 chandeliers, it appears to be short on some of the bare essentials.

The dispute emerged after minutes from a parliamentary committee meeting were leaked.

'Architectural jewel'

According to these, in the meeting Mr Unghianu reported that after Nato officials had asked him for the plans of the building, they said they were displeased with both the number and quality of the toilet facilities.

Nato suggested the installation of temporary toilets, but Bucharest objected that they did not have the money to fit them, and that they might upset the aesthetic appeal of what some consider to be an architectural jewel of a building.

The palace's architect, Anca Petrescu, has called the request for extra temporary facilities humiliating.

She told Romania's Adevarul newspaper that all the toilets would be working during the summit, and suggested that someone with portable toilets for hire was trying to make money at the taxpayers' expense.

Wikipedia: Palace of the Parliament

Wikipedia 18 March 2008

Did you know...
    ...that, during a conflict which split the Romanian far right, the antisemitic newspaper
    Sfarmă-Piatră oscillated between the fascist Iron Guard and the corporatist National
    Renaissance Front?

The sharpest contradiction of the modern world lies in the gap between the desperate warning about an imminent ecological catastrophe caused by political irresponsibility and the inability to bring global pollution to a halt, despite its being the biggest threat for the planet. If anybody were to survive a nuclear accident, the climate changes brought by such disaster would reduce any such chance, small as it is, to nil. Not only the UN, UNESCO or the European Union, but even the Roman Catholic Church, must intervene, employing own methods, to make humanity aware of the deadly perils posed by world pollution. A pollution wilfully committed sometimes even by the states most vocal in criticising it. Although world community is cohesive on many aspects, its savage egotism cancels such unity when the need calls for it.

Unfortunately, Romania is also torn by this contradiction. Its ecological environment degenerates at a pace that stuns anybody but those living in this country, whose words and actions are so much apart from one another, whether they stand the top or the base of the social pyramid. A gap that grows increasingly wider as the base gets larger and the top narrower. In this respect, Bucharest has acquired a double symbol, Romania’s capital and EU’s most polluted capital city.

It is the city’s green spaces that suffer the most. Even as public rallies were being underway for saving the Bordei Park from turning into a real estate project, the green surface area in Bucharest fell from 3,740 hectares to a paltry 1,400 hectares, which means there are only 7 sqms of green space per inhabitant, from 50 sqms recommended by the EU. The forests surrounding Bucharest are cut at an alarming rate to be replaced by all sort of menacing constructions. So big is the threat that even the Baneasa Zoo, which is facing all sorts of aggressions, is in danger of being closed and its grounds snatched overnight.

And Bucharest’s example has been propagating fast throughout the country. And not since yesterday but 15 years ago, when Romania expressed its commitment to join the EU. Property diversification was the first condition set for that to happen, which the clientele-subservient state officials saw as the forced privatisation of state property. And although the Maastricht Treaty made environment protection the EU’s top priority, the forced and fraudulent privatisation practised here have undermined exactly that goal. The forest privatisation law is telling in this respect. Despite the law stipulating that private forests shall continue to abide by the national forestry policy, once started, massive tree-cuttings could not be brought to a halt any more.

Trees are being cut even on tens and hundreds of thousands of hectares of state-owned forests. Once they’ve made it to Parliament or governing coalitions, local happy-go-lucky fellows destroy the forests and shamelessly steal their wealth. This is how Romania has made the gross wood from recklessly cut forests and the scrap metal from purposely ruined industrial units into its chief exports. Exports which are way below the level of imports, with all the consequences this imbalance has on the living standards of Romanians and the state of Romania’s economy in general.

Yet, the consequences are not just social and economic, but environmental as well. The savage forest-cuttings have begun being dramatically felt under the form of landslides responsible for entire localities being flooded, homes, bridges, railways and roads being destroyed. Torrent adjustments for which Romania used to be renowned Europe-wide is about to become a thing of the past thanks to the steep deterioration of forests.

Forests recklessly cut in plain areas and even the destruction of protective forest belts are felt increasingly painful, among others, by agricultural production per hectare being below the European average. Not to mention Romania’s cynegetic fund, whose Carpathian bear, stags and wild boar are unique in Europe. Its rational exploitation could bring hundreds of millions of euros into the state coffers, without any investment but intelligence and respect for the natural riches of this country.

Yet it is exactly intelligence and respect that are polluted in Romania, to such extent it has often been requested to serve as the dumpsite of Europe.

The "Save Bucharest" Association presented on Thursday its independent report called "Bucharest, an urban disaster", drawing the attention towards the fact that historically priceless buildings are left to ruin or destroyed on purpose by people interested in the terrain beneath them. The document also reveals that the traffic in Bucharest is less and less tolerable, since the populace density reached 9,009 people per square kilometer, and the green space is decreasing in surface from one year to the next. The same report shows that the number of people affected by respiratory diseases is increasing alarmingly.

To compare the figures, Berlin has a populace density of 3,905 inhabitants, Vienna has 3,850 and Budapest has 3,674.

"It is widely considered that the level where the social comfort dramatically drops is 3,500 inhabitants per square kilometers. Despite this, Bucharest authorities offers countless construction authorizations in already overpopulated areas", the report shows.

The same paper indicates that the green space in Bucharest decreased from 3,500 hectares in 1989 to 1,500 in 2007.

A few weeks ago, the Romanian Environment Ministry received a letter from the Ukrainian authorities announcing their decision to finalise the controversial Bastroe project. Romanian environment minister Korodi Attila responded by taking the matter before the European Council of environment ministers, a move that brought swift results. Attila Korodi:

“The European Commission makes it clear that Ukraine has breached international agreements on the cross-border impact of an investment, and publicly requests Ukraine to revise its decision. The European Commission will send a letter to the Government of Ukraine, stating this position and asking Kiev to account for it.”

In Bucharest on Thursday and Friday, European Commissioner for Transport Jacques Barrot voiced EU support for Romania's stand and confirmed that Stavros Dimas, the Environment Commissioner, was writing a letter to Ukraine, warning against the environmental issues it gives rise to. But what is the Ukrainian project about, and why such reactions to it? The Chilia arm, the northern branch of the Danube Delta, delineates the Romanian-Ukrainian border, and in its turn has a small delta, with the 4-km long Bastroe channel being the main outlet into the Black Sea. Flying in the face of international legislation, Ukraine has resolved, without consulting with its southern neighbour, to broaden not only this channel, but the 100-km long Chilia arm as a whole, (which is a shared border with Romania), creating a canal allowing access for large-tonnage transport vessels. This, according to experts in numerous countries, including Ukraine, is a major threat to the Danube Delta environment, which lies mostly in Romania and is protected by UNESCO programmes.

Romania has chosen the path of dialogue and international arbitration, although it has the means to try and force Ukraine into considering Romania and the European Union ‘s objections against the Bastroe project. For example, Kiev is seeking NATO admission, and Romania's veto may hinder the accession. Offering political realism as well as elegant diplomacy, Foreign Minister Adrian Cioroianu stated on Thursday that Romania backed a partnership between the North-Atlantic Alliance and Ukraine, as a prerequisite for accession. The partnership may be endorsed in the forthcoming NATO Summit in Bucharest. Will Kiev match this pragmatism, and pursue political interests over the economic ones in the Bastroe affair?

An exhibition including paintings, graphic works, drawings, glassware and furniture entitled “Art Nouveau in the collections of the Cotroceni National Museum and the Pelisor Castle”, conceived by Czech artist Alphonse Mucha, Romanian painters of the “Tinerimea artistica (The Young Artists, editor’s note)” group or glass designers Emile Galle and Rene Lalique, will be opened on Thursday at the Cotroceni National Museum.

Alphonse Mucha (1860 – 1939), Czech artist who emigrated in Paris in 1887, was one of the most significant personalities of the Art Nouveau movement, who approached several art genres, but excelled in graphic works and conceived some of the most famous posters of his time, including “Gismonde” for actress Sarah Bernhardt.

The exhibition will also include works by Privat Livemont (1872 – 1909), Adolphe Cossard (1880 – 1952) and Marcel Lenoir (1898 – 1980). Art Nouveau is an art movement that highly influenced visual arts, design and architecture at the beginning of the twentieth century, in most European countries, but also in North America.

In Romanian plastic arts, Art Nouveau was represented by works of painters representing “Tinerimea artistica)”, who enjoyed great support by Heiress Princess Marie. The future queen was thoroughly familiar with the Art Nouveau principles, reflected in her book design works, but above all in her interior design projects currently exhibited at the Pelisor Castle.

The last Romanian artist affiliated to the Art Nouveau movement is Lucia Beller (1881 – approximately 1961), artist who conceived several stained glass window, tapestry, printed fabrics and painted pottery projects. Beside Art Nouveau paintings, graphic works and drawings, the Cotroceni Museum will also exhibit glassware created by famous artists such as Emile Galle (1846 – 1904), Rene Lalique (1860 – 1945), the brothers Jean-Louis Auguste Daum (1854 – 1909) and Jean – Antonin Daum (1864 – 1930).

The opening will take place on Thursday, at 18.00. The exhibition will be opened until April 6, 2008.

Wikipedia 6 March 2008

Wikipedia 1 March 2008

On this day...
      Mărţişor in Romania and Moldova, Martenitsa in Bulgaria.

26 February 2008
by Daniel J. Wakin
New York Times

PYONGYANG, North Korea — For much of his 60 years, Valentin Hirsu has thought of those three Korean boys in his class.

It was at Music School No. 1 in Bucharest, Romania. The boys were North Korean orphans from the war that had torn up their country. One played piano, another clarinet, the third flute.

After about six years, they were taken home.

Mr. Hirsu never heard from them again. Now, in Pyongyang as a cellist with the visiting New York Philharmonic, he is asking about their fate.

“It’s a crime not to look for them if I’ll be there,” he said on the eve of the orchestra’s departure from Beijing. “I don’t know if they are alive or minister of culture. How am I supposed to know?” he said.

Mr. Hirsu kept a picture that includes the three Koreans among a clutch of students around a teacher, like a “mother hen,” he said.

He recalled the three boys as excellent students and good kids. “They were the best in drawing,” he said. “They were the best in geography, even Romanian, volleyball, everything.”

After graduating, Mr. Hirsu embarked on a successful career as a soloist in Romania. In 1975, he immigrated to Israel and a year later to the United States, where he almost immediately won an audition for the Philharmonic.

Mr. Hirsu gave the photograph to Fred Carriere, the executive director of the Korea Society, which helped the Philharmonic with logistics for the trip. Mr. Hirsu had a phonetic recollection of the names, but that did not prove to be much help. Mr. Carriere said Monday, after the orchestra arrived in Pyongyang, that he had had no success in locating the three.

A disappointed Mr. Hirsu said he would not give up, promising to ask every North Korean musician he encountered about them. “I can find them on my own,” he said.

25 February 2008
by Delia Radu
BBC Romanian Service, Bucharest

A fierce debate is raging in Romania over investigations into the activities of the communist-era secret police.

The investigative body's work was outlawed by the Constitutional Court - but a government decree overruled the court's decision earlier this month.

The feared Securitate came to symbolise the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu, whose regime collapsed amid bloody street fighting in December 1989.

The National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives (CNSAS) was set up in 1999.

For several years, it struggled against a reluctant post-communist Romanian Intelligence Service, custodian of the two million surveillance files compiled by the Securitate.

Eventually the council got hold of what was described as "kilometres of files". Its main duties were to help people find and photocopy their personal records and to check the backgrounds of high-profile candidates for important public positions.

Some criticised the council for being slow, disorganised or politically motivated, but most agreed that Romanians needed to know and understand their past.

Several hundred cases of collaboration were publicised - and sometimes the CNSAS information leaked out.

Search for truth

Romania - a new member of the EU - is now awaiting a new law for the investigation of secret files.

Former anti-communist dissident Doina Cornea represents one side in the debate. In the opposite corner is retired Securitate agent Ilie Merce.

"We need the truth about our own lives, we need to break the chain of secrets and lies of the past if we want to be free," says Mrs Cornea.

As one of the few opponents of the Ceausescu regime in the 1980s, this diminutive woman found herself at the centre of a massive surveillance operation.

Her Securitate file consists of 30 volumes, amounting to 7,000 pages. She has only begun to look through this mass of papers.

How does it feel to read all those surveillance notes now?

"First of all, I found it hard to believe how important I was to them," she says.

"Around 100 Securitate employees, some of them high-ranking officials, were involved in the operation.

"There were agents monitoring my moves, my home, family and neighbours, tapping and transcribing everyone's conversations.

"As my calls to fight the oppression were broadcast on Radio Free Europe and followed by my telephone number and address, many people across Romania tried to get in touch with me, only to find themselves grabbed by the Securitate. It was very moving to find these people's letters, complete with envelopes, in one of the files."

Witch-hunt fears

Mrs Cornea says the CNSAS "verdicts" were meant to have moral and symbolic value - they were not the equivalent of judicial verdicts.

She deplores the Constitutional Court's ban and its argument that the council had unlawfully acquired judicial powers.

She hopes the new law for probing Securitate files will provide a better framework for the council's activities and will continue to bar former collaborators or Securitate agents from high office.

But Ilie Merce, a member of the legislature and former Securitate agent, has a different view.

"The CNSAS had become an instrument for personal or political vendettas, or trafficking of files, and a new-style political police," he argues.

"The old law proved divisive and sometimes libellous. Yes, the files of officials should continue to be checked, but not made public. Parliament should get the relevant information, or the government, if a particular file seems to involve a cabinet member.

"Whenever an abuse was committed, the victims should seek justice according to the law - otherwise there will be chaos. Whoever did anything wrong should pay for their own mistakes.

"But we can't make culpable whole social or professional categories of people."

The CNSAS has been pursuing cases file-by-file, not collectively punishing those who served in the communist regime.

Its "verdicts" can reveal whether senior officials have lied about their communist past - and can lead to prosecutions.

The right to know

Mr Merce was the Securitate chief in Buzau County, central Romania, when the communist regime collapsed in 1989.

Now an MP for the nationalist Greater Romania Party, he says he is proud to have worked for Romanian intelligence for 25 years, before retiring in 1996.

"In everything I did, I observed the law. But to this day I believe some sensitive information should remain classified. I won't reveal who my informers or the people I used to work with were - that would be very demeaning and unprofessional."

He welcomes the Constitutional Court ruling and considers the CNSAS "dead and buried". So does Romania need an institution to probe the communist secret files at all?

"I won't say such an institution shouldn't exist, mainly to grant people access to their personal files if they were under surveillance and if they want to see them. And then people should decide what to do next, seek justice if they were mistreated.

"But the management of this institution shouldn't issue verdicts, publicise their findings, or reveal them brazenly on TV in the middle of talk shows, as they sometimes did, because such acts can have serious consequences."

Former political prisoners in Romania get only a small allowance - not enough to compensate for the loss of a job or a house. The pursuit of justice for Ceausescu-era crimes remains difficult.

23 February 2008
by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
New York Times

MIHAIL KOGALNICEANU AIR BASE, Romania (AP)—It always happened at 1 a.m. In a secluded corner of this heavily guarded airfield, two snipers would creep across a rooftop and take their positions. Moments later, just below, a black minibus would arrive and wait.

Three times in 2004, and twice more in 2005, a jet landed and the black bus drove out to meet it. Large, mysterious parcels were exchanged that, according to a Romanian official who says he witnessed it, looked like bundled-up terror suspects.

The official, a high-ranking veteran with inside knowledge of operations at the base, said the planes then left for North Africa with their cargo and two CIA handlers aboard.

His descriptions, told on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press, add to suspicions surrounding Romania's involvement in ''extraordinary rendition''—the beyond-the-law transfer of U.S. terror suspects from country to country by the CIA. Human rights advocates say renditions were the agency's way to outsource torture of prisoners to countries where it is permitted practice.

Romania's precise role is a little-reported part of the system that is being slowly revealed, often to the chagrin of U.S. allies. In an embarrassing reversal after years of denial, Britain admitted Thursday that its military outpost on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia had twice been used as a refueling stop for the secret transport of terrorism suspects.

The European Commission on Friday accused Poland and Romania of dodging its requests to clarify their involvement. Both countries deny accusations of wrongdoing, including a report by Dick Marty, a Swiss official working for the Council of Europe, the continent's top human rights watchdog, who accused the CIA of running secret prisons in the two countries.

Prisoners typically were shackled and kept naked and in isolation, he alleged, in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights. Such treatment also would run contrary to Romania's own laws and its commitment to human rights, a key condition to the Balkan nation's 2007 accession to the European Union.

According to the Romanian official:

-- U.S. pilots routinely filed bogus flight plans—or none at all—and headed to undeclared destinations.

-- C-130 Hercules cargo planes and other U.S. military aircraft arriving from Iraq regularly parked in a restricted area just off the runway, where they feigned technical trouble and sat under guard for days at a time—awaiting repairs that never occurred.

-- Three buildings on the military portion of the air base were strictly off-limits to Romanians but were frequented and controlled by the Americans.

''It was all set up and simulated to look like normal activity. But believe me, it was very unusual,'' said the official, who said he needed anonymity to protect himself.

''If you are 50 yards away, you say they are 'parcels,''' he said. ''But I think people were on (the plane) and I think they were bundled up.'' The entire scene was completely out of character with normal aircraft arrivals or standard cargo protocol, he said.

But top Romanian authorities deny the CIA ran so-called ''black sites'' on their territory. While the official described a pattern of highly unusual flight maneuvers and covert American activities, he says he never saw a prisoner.

Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base, former presidential security adviser Ioan Talpes said in an interview with the AP, had an arrangement with the CIA that gave the agency the right to use the base as needed.

''There were official arrangements of a secret and confidential nature which gave CIA planes the right to land at Romanian airports,'' said Talpes, who worked at the time for ex-President Ion Iliescu. ''They had actions there that we didn't know about,'' Talpes said. He said Iliescu signed an agreement guaranteeing that Romania would secure the perimeter and otherwise not interfere.

John Sifton, who conducts independent human rights investigations, said the dates and descriptions of the flights described by the base official match the timing and routes of known CIA rendition flights recorded in Eurocontrol flight databases.

Those included an April 2004 flight from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that went out of its way to stop at Mihail Kogalniceanu before heading on to Casablanca, Morocco.

''It was a time when they were moving people around,'' Sifton told the AP. The Romania stopovers, he added, ''look pretty shady to me.''

Marty's report concluded that the CIA secretly held al-Qaida operatives, Taliban leaders and other ''high-value detainees'' in Romania and Poland between 2002 and 2005.

The report, citing unnamed intelligence officials, said five people either authorized or were aware of the Romania operation: Iliescu, Talpes, former Defense Minister Ioan Mircea Pascu, Sergiu Medar, a former head of military intelligence, and current President Traian Basescu. Detainees were subjected ''to interrogation techniques tantamount to torture'' and underscored ''a permissive attitude on the part of the Romanian authorities.''

Basescu's office refused to discuss the allegations. ''What business do we have with this?'' it replied. Pascu called it ''a closed subject,'' and Medar declined a request to be interviewed.

Beyond the midnight flights and the bus, the base official who spoke with the AP said he had questions about what went on aboard larger aircraft from Iraq that arrived at the base and then parked for several days, supposedly awaiting repairs.

''They misinformed. They lied,'' he said. ''It happened many times and there was nothing anyone could do about it.''

President Bush and other administration officials have confirmed the existence of the rendition program but have not named the countries involved. They say the U.S. does not engage in torture.

Romanian officials said the U.S. military has invested about $18 million in Mihail Kogalniceanu Airport, including a $4 million perimeter fence, a new hangar and road improvements. Romania has supported and provided troops for the U.S.-led campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Talpes, the former presidential security adviser, said Romanian authorities did not intrude on the U.S. ''respected zone'' at Mihail Kogalniceanu, used mostly to ferry troops and supplies to Iraq and Afghanistan—because they did not want to make ''an unfriendly gesture.''

Pressed about whether prisoners were tortured, he said bluntly: ''Even if I knew that one of my allies did something, I wouldn't tell you.''

CIA chief spokesman Mark Mansfield said the agency had no comment about the black bus scenario, but he defended renditions as both legal and effective.

''They have disrupted potential attacks by taking terrorists off the streets, and they have allowed us, as well as our foreign partners, to gain invaluable intelligence on the terrorists who remain at large,'' Mansfield said.

Sen. Norica Nicolai, a former prosecutor who led a parliamentary investigation, said her probe found no evidence that the CIA operated a prison or conducted interrogations in Romania.

Nicolai said she was still waiting for Marty to respond to a September request to divulge his sources. ''It's in our interests to try to see what happened. We are not a third-world country,'' she said.

But Cosmin Gusa, a leading opposition lawmaker, said a full accounting was unlikely. ''Nobody wants to go deeper,'' he said. ''They don't want to talk about this. This topic is a deadly one.''

------

Associated Press Writers Alison Mutler in Romania and Pamela Hess in Washington contributed to this report.

21 February 2008
by Ahto Lobjakas and Valeria Vitu
Radio Free Europe