Democracy by the fist
About 2 weeks before Bucharest was suppose to host the NATO summit, clouds of chaos started to cover the capital of Romania. The mass media was publishing loads of articles announcing that the anarchists will come to Bucharest in order to threaten the national security, but at the same time announcing that they are prepared to intervene by force for stopping any attempt of NATO criticism. Young activists’ names were made public as a measure of intimidation. It was the rise of the repression…
On the 20th of March 6 germans were stopped at the border, kept for 14 hours in the custody of the border police and secret services, denied access into Romania. The only reason for their refusal to enter the country was the possession of anti war info material. According to the border police “in their vans we found anti NATO and anti violence leaflets”. Would they have been allowed to enter the country if they had “pro-violence leaflets”?? The german consulate couldn’t manage to intervene in any way. Different human right organizations signed a petition asking the Romanian authorities to give a reasonable explanation for violating the right of free movement for the European citizens. The request was ignored and is still pending. During the next days a lot of foreigners were being stopped by the Romanian border police and turned back. (PIC1) http://romania.indymedia.org/en/2008/03/2491.shtml
Meanwhile the University of Bucharest organized a public debate on which some Romanian NATO representatives were invited. They basically refused to answer most of the questions that were addressed to them by the public, invoking the confidentiality of information. At the same time, they managed to raise the general discontent by making allegations like “The islam is dangerous because of having to many fundamentalists…it’s somehow in their nature to adhere to fundamentalism”. The spirits were calmed down by the former dean of the university that intervened by saying: “Because we are teaching sociology here, we can’t accept such radical statements and generalizations”. The guests’ answer was “You stick to your opinion and I stick to mine”. For most of the students it was the first time when they realized how and by whom NATO is being represented in Romania. Just one day after the debate, Romanians found out that their contribution to NATO is 700 euros/citizen.
Since the beginning of February the citizens of Bucharest were informed that they will have 3 days off from work or school and were encouraged to leave the city during the summit. The municipality started to clean the streets, plant trees and flowers and block sectors of the main roads. The public opinion’s response was “If they send us on holiday, they should also give us the money for this” or “It’s nice that they are cleaning the city and planting flowers for Bush’s arrival. He will see an artificial environment created just for his short visit without understanding anything about this country. Hopefully he won’t stick too much in Romania and we will have the entire spring to enjoy the flowers and trees.”
A few days before the summit, a 20 years old student was run over by a car because of the police intervention in controlling the traffic for the prime minister’s convoy. The police officers did not give her the first aid and left her lying on the street while continuing to monitor the traffic. Because of the blocked roads the ambulance arrived too late and the young girl died. The humanity of the police officers was not questioned and the case was qualified as an accident. No one was declared responsible. A lot of citizens from Bucharest accused the Romanian authorities for creating chaos on the streets and for endangering the security of the people. In response the authorities announced that during the summit no one is allowed to carry any objects bigger than a 2 liter plastic bottle on the streets in the proximity of the “Zero zone” and that the people living in this area should not make any sudden moves inside their apartments or go out on the balcony because they might confuse the snipers and a “collateral damage” might take place. The “zero zone” included some of the most populated public spaces (squares, roads, buss stops, etc.) in Bucharest.
ACT 2. The second wave of repression
“Democracy don't rule the world, You'd better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that's better left unsaid.” (Bob Dylan)
Just 2 days before the NATO summit, about 60 romanian, german, canadian, swiss, czech, polish and spanish activists were preparing a series of workshops, film screenings and discussions in a hall that they rented with the purpose of organizing public cultural events that would offer an alternative-critical view over the existence, mission and expansion of NATO.
The police were arbitrarily picking them up from the street and keeping them in custody for 5-7 hours for investigations. The people got used to this abuse that was always invoked in the name of national security and ‘legitimate’ suspicion. None of them was accused of anything and after being identified, interrogated and carefully searched they were being released. People that were spreading flyers announcing the events that were about to take place were also kept in custody of the police for 6 hours, together with the journalist that was accompanying them.
Meanwhile, similar incidents were taking place in different pars of Bucharest, where people were spending half a day in the police station for: having a book signed by a Romanian artist which showed a satellite image of Bucharest, having a suspicious bag, wearing a t-shirt on which it was written “no nato-no war”, having a suspicious CD case, waiting for someone that did not come, etc. Lots of others were kept in police custody without being given any stupid reasons at all.
The freedom of the individual was being threatened by the authorities’ abuse on the street as well as in their own apartments by invoking national security measures as well as the law according to which they are allowed to detain any person for 24 hours without giving any reasons for it.
Despite the public discontent with the situation, nothing had changed. Hearing that one of your friends is in the custody of the police started to sound as normal as drinking a glass of water is. No motivations, no accusations, no nothing. Just pure abuse in the name of the national security. Some of the people were set free from the police custody when they started calling the greedy tabloids. Still, with or without mass-media…people were continuously being picked up from the streets and investigated.
One day before the summit the alternative space for workshops and discussions was made public through the flyers that some people managed to spread before being taken by the police, as well as on some internet pages (ex: romania.indymedia) and in a mainstream newspaper. Everyone was invited to attend the activities that some people prepared and announced.
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen”.
(George Orwell, "1984", first sentence)
On the 2nd of April during the morning meeting in the public hall, a few policemen came to inspect the place. They announced the people there that the owner of the place called the police because of being aggressed by 4 people that might be in the room. Meanwhile other people that came to the place were denied access inside. No one understood anything as the charges seemed to be coming from nowhere. None of the people from inside or outside abused the owner and he did not bother to come looking for the potential aggressor. The situation was confusing for all those present and it soon became dramatic when tens of riot police or anti-terrorist assault teams came running from around the corner and started shouting, pushing people that were outside, while others were running inside the courtyard. They brutally pushed people from near the courtyard entrance and immobilized a few others that were close to the door.
I was one of the few that were on the outside of the fence and were denied access inside. We tried calling our friends from inside and we heard screams and shouts. No one knew what was happening…but by looking at the riot police equipped with bulletproof armour, truncheons, helmets, masks and even Kalashnikov weapons we started fearing for what was about to happen.
After a few minutes we could not contact anyone from inside. We were kept on the opposite sidewalk by tens of police officers, while from near the door the secret services were filming us. After an hour the first riot police truck came out the gate while tens of voices from outside were shouting “Libertate!” (freedom). We did not know if our friends were in there, but later they said that the only good thing for them was hearing us.
After 3 of these trucks left the courtyard, a friend called saying they were at police station 11. He said that he was ok, but that they beat them up and some are in quite critical condition. The conversation was interrupted. We couldn’t contact each other again. Later we found out that they were not allowed to talk on the phone.
The riot police entered the room and put them with the face to the ground. They sprayed pepper gas inside and tied the people with plastic handcuffs. Some of them asked to loose the ties and the response that the ‘law’s protectors’ gave was in the form of boots, fits and truncheons in the heads and backs of the people.
“I was with the face down on the ground, having to breathe the dust of the floor mixed with pepper gas. I just heard screams of pain from my friends, but I could not move to see who is being beaten up. It was horrible. I thought that they would kill us.”
One of our friends verbally riposted to the aggression and he was brutally beaten up with everything that the riot police found at hand.
After that they were taken out from the room and pushed in the big trucks. A girl broke her leg when being pushed inside.
“While being taken to the police station they threatened that if we say a word they would kill us and throw us of the window. They threatened us all the way. We couldn’t move at all and we could not react in any way when hearing you shouting <libertate>. But it was the first time when I felt that there is still hope for something”.
After a few hours since it all started we decided to go to police station 11 where some of our friends were. Others were in different police stations, but no one knew in which ones. We were about 50 people together with the media. After leaving the place, they arrested 4 other friends of ours that were behind and were not on sight.
When arriving at the police station we were not allowed to get in the courtyard, but after peacefully forcing the gate we found ourselves in front of a few riot police that did not let us get inside the building. We waited outside for our friends to be released. Meanwhile we improvised some banners on which it said “is this how democracy looks like?”, “we want an answer!!!”, “free them!!!”, “freedom of speech”, “the police and the military are against the people”. The same slogans were being shouted so that the ones inside could hear that they are not alone. Someone was playing the guitar…
More than an hour later, six of them were released. They said that around 10 others were inside, but meanwhile we found out that our friend that was in almost critical condition because of the police brutality was at Police station no 12. We all decided to leave this station and move to the other one in order to see if he was provided with medical assistance. We took the banners with us and the media followed.
Once we got there we found 3 other friends that had been released and were under shock. One of the girls had almost bleeding wounds from the handcuffs. The boy that had been beaten up was still inside together with other 8 people and they did not provide him with any medical assistance. Scandals arouse and people were shouting at the policemen to call an ambulance, to release him and take him to hospital. The police’s answer was: “we don’t consider that he needs medical care and he did not ask for it!”. After 2-3 hours when the people, a lawyer, the media and a few Human Rights NGO representatives put pressure on the police to release the people…we saw them coming out one by one. Our friend was disfigured…almost impossible to recognize him. He said that he asked for medical assistance, but did not receive. He was released 8 hours after being beaten up. After hugging him I felt the pepper spray on my face…7 hours after they put it into his.
While waiting for them to be released, other friends came from police stations 11 and 23. They had also been released and came to join all the others, until all would be freed.
Section 10 was our last stop. When we got there we found out that only one person was still inside and that he was identified as being the aggressor of the hall’s owner. Shortly after the lawyer intervened he was also released.
None of the 50 people that were beaten up and detained by the police did receive any charges. The final declaration of the police was that the intervention was dictated by the fact that the owner was aggressed, but none of the people they detained and abused seemed to be the aggressor.
The conclusion of the day was that people were asked to believe that over 100 police and riot police officers were forced to intervene brutally when the owner of a hall called saying that 4 people pushed him in a street altercation. Still none of the ones that were taken from that space, beaten up, verbally aggressed, threatened to be killed, and kept in the police stations without any food or water for 8-10 hours was proved guilty of anything. Who’s going to answer for this brutality??? Who ordered this masked gorillas to beat up people for no reason??? And why???
After all were released we started our trip to the factory hall for a short discussion and a good sleep. It was already the 3rd of April…and everyone was hungry and tired. While marching towards the place, a Romanian and Nato flag fell on us from the top of an electricity pillar. We on it and laughed. Everyone was exhausted, but at least everybody was free! Everything needed to be reorganized and reconsidered.
The totalitarian regime showed its ugly face again. The public opinion was horrified by the incident, saying that in 1989 people died for democracy…but as we all see, nothing had changed.
“ People died for nothing…and we are all living a big lie.” Someone said.
Our state is ruled by stupidity and incompetence, with the support of the misinforming corrupt media, and the gorilla arm of the masked robots trained to respect orders coming from their masters of puppets.
It's all true. It’s all real. Nothing here is fake. Nothing you see on this show is fake. It’s merely controlled. (Truman Show)
Dear government…with all your ministeries and masked servants, with all your secret services and media support…with all your lies and manipulative set-ups…You will not defeat the people. You terrorize them, abuse them, misinforme them, threaten them, reduce them to the limit of physical and psychological survival...using their money to establish and maintain these structures of terror… We have too many questions for which we never receive any answers!!! And we continue to be forced to become part of things that we would like to fight against…while people die and wars are being perpetrated all over the world in our name and with our money!!!!!!!!!!!! What happened to the freedom that we thought we have??? We clearly see that it was all just a big illusion.
On the 25th of march the Romanian president and prime minister had a meeting when they decided that all the Romanian telecommunication companies should allow the intelligence services to use their infrastructure in order to see/listen to the phone conversations of all their clients.
A few days before and after the incident our mobile phones were not functioning properly. We heard different voices and our conversations were being jammed or interrupted. We knew that our conversations were being intercepted, but having nothing to hide we did not panic. It was just very annoying knowing that you are being listened to non-stop.
At the same time we were being followed everywhere by the secret police. One day I was going home with a friend and we counted 7 people that were following us around the city. We asked them why they are doing it and they said “Everyone has to make a living for himself…you make yours, I make mine.” Nothing more…nothing less. They were breathing in our backs for a week and the only thing that we did not understand was why they were so many after just a few people that did not do any direct action that would raise their suspicion. They were not trying to hide and what seemed to be a joke at first, had soon transformed into a terror and intimidation saga.
Every night we had secret service civilians and cars escorting us everywhere we went, while our phones were hardly functioning. We had 18 years old kids that were infiltrated in order not to create suspicion on reasons of age or looks. At the same time we found out that someone we called “friend” for almost a year, was most probably an informer for the intelligence services. A few days after the summit ended we confronted him, but he denied everything. The evidence that we have against him is indisputable.
Until I’ve seen all that, I couldn’t have imagined how the intelligence services operate. How stupid or how intelligent they are. I still don’t know which one is right? Their intimidation functioned to some point, because after getting used to it, we even allowed their undercover informers to attend our meetings, discussions and actions.
In the end…they lost their time... While Bucharest has probably the biggest amount of homeless people in Europe, the Romanian authorities invest huge sums in paying the wages of masked riot brigades that beat off young people, and in paying the intelligence services that send loads of officers to escort youngsters on their daily routes.
“Seeing how vigilant and efficient the secret/intelligence services operated, they will not have any further excuse for letting the big gangsters escape through the labyrinth of justice. Or maybe this is just how they operate…they beat off innocent people while the others are being left alone and protected by the corrupt arms of ‘justice’. And for the stupidity and lack of professionalism that characterize them…they are being paid from the taxes of those that they are hired to abuse. It is almost unbelievable!”a man on the street declared, when being interviewed by a journalist.
“Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the very same time the beginning of his freedom and development of his reason.” (Erich Fromm)
A lot of people realized that democracy and freedom are just abstract concepts without meaning. The NATO, an alliance that is suppose to safeguard our countries, created chaos and messed up our lives. It does this for years, long before Romania officially joined the team. Our leaders kiss the stinky asses of all possible alliances and unions without offering any impartial, not to say critical, view on this. And when 50 people gather to organize a critical discussion, they are being beaten up, detained, accused of terrorism, terrorized, threatened and followed in order to be reduced to silence! But it is not so easy, because even if in this life we have a lot of things that we lose everyday…our freedom of mind and consciousness as well as our ideas will not be abolished by the totalitarian fist of this so called “democracy”.
On the 3rd of April, a first NGO pressed charges on the Romanian police and anti terrorist assault teams (riot police) for making use of unjustified brutality against people that had peaceful behaviors and intentions. All those detained by the police will write and sign a declaration describing the abuse that was pointed at them. 10 out of 50 people that were detained pressed charges against the police on reasons of unjustified use of physical and verbal violence, and the other 40 people are their witnesses.
2 different events took place…one march for escorting the wounded people to the hospital for taking medical certification of the abuse and a protest in front of the Czech embassy for accepting to have an anti-missile shield on its territory. Both actions were made by the same people that risked to be beaten up again. Fortunately it did not happen…
On a big black banner it was written in red letters “You can break our bones, but you will not destroy our ideas.”
Few days after the incident the Romanian riot police made it’s official statement admitting that they’ve beaten up some people that wanted to fight with them and that their brutal actions were coordinated as a self defense measure.
The public opinion’s voice accused them of lying and made fun of them by saying that no sane person would attack a masked giant riot police when they are pointing a Kalashnikov to his face after previously putting pepper gas in his eyes.
Their second statement said that the people were self-chastising in front of their eyes by heating themselves with the heads on the walls and fists in the face. The media mockery was even funnier when a journalist asked the riot police to tell him how come they did not intervene in order to stop the people from torturing themselves. At the same time, they asked to see the video footage from the intervention that the riot police are suppose to have according to the law. “This time we did not film anything” their spokesmen said.
The conclusion is that when they will be asked to come to court and justify the abuse they’ve made there would probably have no evidence to support their false statements, while the people that pressed charges will present a series of declarations, pictures, medical certificates and a list of articles from the Romanian Constitution that the authorities have deliberately violated.
Some NGO’s have already pressed charges against the riot police for making false statements in the absence of any legal evidence.
Our advice is that they would better shut their mouths and think of a strategy for defending themselves against all the charges that they’ll have to face during this trials.
In preparing the NATO summit and during the summit, the Romanian state violated the following Romanian constitutional articles: Article 21 Access to Justice, Article 23 Individual Freedom, Article 24 Right to legal counsel, Article 25 Freedom of movement, Article 29 Freedom of conscience, Article 30 Freedom of expression, Article 39 Freedom of assembly, Article 40 Right of association, plus a series of other civil rights.
“Solidarity is a weapon” is still written with red paint on the walls of the hall. The owner asked us to cover it with white paint. We refused to do it. In the rental contract it’s written that any changes that are made to the location will become the property of the owner after the contract’s availability ends. This is our present for him and for those that will follow.
Every one of us realizes that the chances for winning such a fight against the Romanian authorities might be a lost cause. But there is no other way except for trying to fight for social justice and for a different world!!!! Everyone should understand that for some people this is a way of living rather than a marginal occurrence.
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