THE STATE of HUMAN RIGHTS in ROMANIA (An Update)
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[COMMITTEE PRINT] 101ST CONGRESS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATWIES CSCE REVOLT AGAINST SILENCE: THE STATE OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN ROMANIA (An Update) Prepared by the Staff OF THE U.S. COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE DECEMBER 1989 Printed for the use of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OmCE 2o-480 WASHINGTON: 1989 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents. Congressional Sales Office U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402 COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE DENNIS DECONCINI,; Arizona, Chairman STENY H. HOYER, Maryland, Cochairman DANTE B. FASCELL, Florida FRANK LAUTENBERG, New Jersey EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts TIMOTHY WIRTH, Colorado BILL RICHARDSON, New Mexico WYCHE FOWLER, Georgia EDWARD FEIGHAN, Ohio HARRY REID, Nevada DON RITTER, Pennsylvania ALFONSE M. D'AMATO, New York CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey JAMES McCLURE, Idaho JOHN EDWARD PORTER, Illinois MALCOM WALLOP, Wyoming FRANK R. WOLF, Virginia ExEcUTIVE BRANCH HON. RICHARD SCHIF1ER. Department of State STEPHEN J. HADLEY, Department of Defense WILLIAM D. FRITTS, Jr., Department of Commerce SAMUEL G. WISE, Staff Director MARY Suz HAFNxR, Deputy Staff Director and General Counsel JANE S. FisHER, Deputy Staff Director MIKE AMITAY, Staff Assistant ANN W. BANCHOFF, Staff Assistant CATHERINE CosmAN, Staff Assistant KIMBERLY PIDCOKE, Receptionist ORmS DEYcHAKiwsKY, Staff Assistant JOHN FtNxRTY, Staff Assistant ROBErT HAND, Staff Assistant GINA M. 1ARNER, Administrative Assistant JuDIrH INGRAM, Staff Assistant JESSE JACOBS, Staff Assistant RONALD McNAmARA, Staff Assistant MicHAnE OcNB, Staff Assistant SPENCER OLIVER, Consultant MARK RAmxE, Senior Advisor for Soviet & East European Affairs BErH Rrcmm, Press Officer ERIKA SCHLAGER, Staff Assistant TOM WARNER, Printing Clerk (H) .... Not only are basic human rights disregarded in Romania, but even the institutions that are supposed to defend them -- the judiciary and the press -- have become instruments of intimidation and terror against the population. That's the cause of the silent revolt in the streets, the apathy of this southern people.... Romanian poet Mircea Dinescu March 1989' 'Mircea Dinescu, "Le desespoir de la caserne Ceausescu," Liberation March 17, 1989, translated and reprinted in Uncaotive Minds Vol. II, No. 3 (7) (May-July 1989), p. 33. iii Letter of Transmittal Patterns of repression in Romania remain sadly the same year after year. The Romanian regime has kept up pressure on members of religious and national minorities, as well as on all who have sought to express themselves freely. It has harassed and punished would-be emigrants by removing them from jobs and housing. It has exiled writers, philosophers and former leaders. It has jailed those who have sought the means to worship freely, and used psychiatric incarceration to punish free expression. The regime has steadily curtailed the opportunities for members of ethnic minorities to maintain and cultivate their cultural heritage, cutting minority-language instruction and publishing to a minimum. Minority cultural and family ties have also been strictly limited. The regime has used violence and threats of violence to discourage citizens from seeking to exercise their rights. Many Romanian dissidents inside and outside the country have received black-bordered death threats, widely believed to be a favorite calling-card of Romania's notorious Securitate (secret police). Increasingly, the regime's persecution has touched all Romanian citizens, who suffer from severe, state-imposed food shortages and the threat of displacement through the sistematizare. or systematization, program. 2 Despite the Romanian Government's March announcement, with great fanfare, that it had repaid the country's foreign debt, there is no sign that the regime will reorder its fiscal priorities in favor of consumption. Rationing continues unabated, while construction of new industrial projects seems to be moving forward with redoubled speed. Poet Mircea Dinescu pointed up the contradictions of life in Romania in a March 1989 interview with the French newspaper Liberation: It's an absurd land where the border guards point their weapons towards their own country, where wheat is harvested on television but rots in the fields, where workers are called "proprietors" so that they can be made to buy what the Constitution says is rightfully theirs: their means of livelihood. Streetcar conductors are obliged to buy their streetcars, drillers must buy their drills, and peasants have to purchase the porches in their own yards .... 3 Romania is a country saddled with over-regulation on the one hand, and riddled with corruption on the other. Its citizens thus are forced to compromise and break rules on a daily basis to feed themselves and their children, and to obtain basic services. But the police keep track of infractions, and consequently have an easy lever to pull anytime they want to bring pressure to bear on a citizen. Human rights activists are not charged with distributing manifestoes; instead they are accused of trafficking in coffee or spying for a foreign power. The Comanesti Baptists, whose case is detailed later in this report, were not tried for building a church, but for using what were termed "stolen" materials. Few speak of any hope for the future, even after President Ceausescu is gone. At most, Romanian citizens expect that the next regime might be able to raise the standard of living quickly by redirecting some food from export to domestic consumption and abandoning some of Ceausescu's most irrational "prestige" projects (e.g., canals that will never be used). Many are well aware of the healing this country and its people will require after the present regime's sustained attack on every 2See Chapter One, "The Systematization Program," for a description. 3Dinescu, gp, CiL, p. 34. v vestige of community, from ethnic group to religious congregation to family. Romania's repressive domestic policies are mirrored in its cynical approach to the international commitments it has undertaken. In January, the regime gave its agreement to the Vienna Concluding Document, then announced that it would abide only by those commitments it did not find objectionable. It rejected the U.N. Human Rights Commission Resolution passed in March calling for appointment of a Special Rapporteur to investigate Romania's human rights performance and has spurned the attempts of seven participating CSCE States to use the new human dimension "mechanism" to address several human rights cases. In the face of criticism at two recent meetings held under the aegis of the 35-country Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, in London and in Paris, Romania has returned to the time- worn and untenable defense of its abysmal record by claiming that "outsiders" have no right to "interfere" in a sovereign country's internal affairs. These patterns are not new, even if the particulars change from year to year. They represent the weary attempts of a discredited regime to cope with a recent development that is new in Romania: a stream of increasingly vocal, articulate and popular dissent is coursing through the country. What seemed a lone writer's pipe- dream only a year ago -- that his open letter of protest would be followed by a stream of others -- suddenly, against all odds, is emerging as a reality in Romania. An opposition consensus is taking shape, and the regime finds that shooting down ideas takes more than its customary sniping at a few isolated intellectuals. Representatives of Romania's political and cultural elites are calling for an end to silence. Silence, they say, has made them accomplices in the crimes against their country. There is no end in sight to repression in Romania, nor are there prospects at present for the ascendance of reform ideas at the top echelons of the state. But we can take heart that some Romanians have found their voices, and are fighting hard for their rights. To paraphrase courageous human rights activist Doina Cornea, to reduce a nation to silence is a crime against the spirit -- a crime we cannot let come to pass. DENNIS DeCONCINI Chairman November 1989 CONTENTS Pa Letter of 'ransmittal ......................................................... V I. The Systematization Program .......................... ............................... 1 U. The Dissenters ......................................................... 4 m. The Workers ......................................................... 12 IV. The Believers ......................................................... 14 V. The Minorities........................................................................................................ 20 VI. Human Contacts ................................................. 23 VII. Postscript............................................................. 26 (vu) 1. THE SYSTEMKIZATION PROGRAM Perhaps no policy better reflects the Romanian regime's contemptuous attitude toward human rights and humanitarian values than the program of sistematizare, or systematization. By the same token, no official Romanian program has provoked such a sustained outcry of protest from all sectors of Romanian society, as well as from the world outside. People seem to be the last priority. in this "nightmare world," as U.N. rapporteur Dumitru Mazilu has described it, where ...newly born babies are denied registration for the first three to four weeks, while old people are refused aid in case of need if they have reached the age of 60, and