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| MEDIA HEADLINES (09.08.07) |
| (2007-08-09) |
| Last updated: 2007-08-10 14:36 EET |
“It was Ion Iliescu who decided to use repression and he personally co-ordinated the miners’ riot of June 1990,” the daily GANDUL concluded after the indictment issued by military prosecutors for the bloodshed that accompanied the fierce political tensions Romania, immediately after the revolution.
As Romania Libera writes, having been voted into power for less than a month, Iliescu assumed the prerogatives of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of Defense and the Interior ministries troops. On June 13th 1990, in peace time, he ordered the use of war-time ammunition to crush what he called “a far-right coup” attempt. And same newspaper further writes that ‘troops opened fire on unarmed crowds’, and the victims included ‘passers-by on their way home.’
ZIUA is adamant: ‘Iliescu overstepped his powers’ and explains: under the law, ‘the army’s partial or full mobilization could only be declared with Parliament’s earlier approval, in exceptional cases.” ‘The right to sound the alarm of war, allowing the use of war-time ammunition, rested exclusively with the Defense minister, but the latter was not in Romania at the time.’
On Wednesday, two generals and two retired colonels were sued for killing 4 civilians, during operations ordered by the president. But, the daily Gardianul notes, ‘Mihai Chitac has come to court again without Iliescu’. While the former Interior minister, a career officer, was legally investigated by military prosecutors, the former president’s case had to be considered separately from Chitac’s case and sent over to the General Prosecutor’s Office. This is the result of a ruling by the Constitutional Court, dominated by Iliescu’s former party fellow members, under which civilians cannot be investigated by military prosecutors.
Even in this context, according to Evenimentul Zilei daily, Iliescu has labeled the investigation as ‘totally absurd’ and was quick to recall the legitimacy bestowed on him by 85% of the votes which he took in the presidential election of May 1990. Newspapers are also drawing attention to the 48 hours which followed the miners’ riot.
During this period, the daily Curentul writes, Romania was actually in the throes of a civil war. Tens of thousands of miners from the Jiu Valley in central Romania obeyed Iliescu’s call to defend what he called ‘a jeopardized democracy’ and marched on Bucharest on June 14th at dawn. They wrought havoc at the University, the opposition parties’ headquarters and independent newspaper offices, leaving behind at least 6 people dead, hundreds wounded and hundreds of people abusively arrested. Romania Libera cites that, after having resorted to the army to restore order, Iliescu called in the miners, who he endlessly thanked for their civic sense to ‘act as a paramilitary force, aimed at fueling terror amid civilians and keeping the opposition in check.’
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